Bentley Priory Museum
- Military history enthusiasts
- History enthusiasts
- Families with children
What Visitors Say
Very evocative museum. Essentially a Italianate mansion & gardens but what a role in British & European history all well illustrated. Sadly just the house as the rest of the RAF site now posh housing and the Bunker filled in.
Absolutely Gem!!! Fabulous! Amazing exhibition, excellent vunteers and their kindness and knowledge is very very good... Perfect caffee! We had soup and pasta! Great garden... all very clean! We will be back!!!
We had a guided tour of the museum which lasted about 1.5 hours. After the tour we had a prepaid cream tea in the cafe which was very nice. You then get as much time as you like to wander around the museum and gardens by yourself. It is a very interesting museum if you like WWII RAF history and we'll worth the tour, as the staff are very knowledgeable. Bit of a drive from Leeds but I wasn't driving, so happy days.
A lovely museum and probably one of the best I have been to so far.Even though it is not the biggest museum I have been to because it is not over crowded and the staff are friendly. It also has a lovely cafe downstairs, a sovereign shop and toilets.
Superb staff. History presented well. It would have been interesting to see a chart of the production rate of our fighters and the RAF v German losses day by day through the Battle of Britain. Plus a bit more about the different tactics, successful and otherwise, Dowding employed as the battle developed. But these are just quibbles. Loved the Dowding introduction film. Only an over-mighty café manageress let the museum down.
Highlights
The Dowding System
First integrated air-defence networkRadar data, phone lines and human plotters turned chaos into a single picture of the sky.
Operations/Filter Room displays
HQ with a View
War run from a country houseOrnate ceilings above, life-and-death timelines below—British irony in brick and plaster.
State rooms & terrace
People of ‘The Few’
Strategy is humanControllers, WAAFs, pilots: the system worked because thousands did.
Personal stories gallery
Opening Hours
Fun Facts
Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding ran Fighter Command from Bentley Priory; his networked ‘Dowding System’ prefigured modern command-and-control.
Winston Churchill visited operations here during the Battle of Britain—the place behind his tribute to ‘The Few’.
The Filter Room’s plotting table didn’t just track raids—it decided where every squadron in No. 11 Group would fight, minute by minute.
