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This building was used as a training facility by the Local Defence Volunteers, which later became the Home Guard. Orwell joined the organization in June 1940, a month after the LDV was formed. He was too ill to enlist in the regular army, otherwise he would have done so. Because of his service in Spain, Orwell was made a sergeant.
After the fall of France, when Britain was left alone to fight the Nazis, Orwell was afraid the the new Churchill government would impose martial law or otherwise sharply curtail liberties, especially for socialists and other left-leaning persons. He joined the Home Guard hoping it would become an instrument for socialist revolution, much as the militias he served with in Spain had. When Churchill did not curtail liberties or put socialist in concentration camps, it came as a surprise to Orwell, and he became more supportive of the government (as opposed to the war effort, which he had always supported).
