Wood Norton Hall
Wood Norton Hall is a country house northwest of Evesham in the English county Worcestershire . The Victorian house was the last residence of Prince Phillippe, Duc d'Orléans , who claimed the royal throne of France . During World War II , the BBC used the house as a listening station for enemy radio broadcasts, an emergency broadcasting station and an engineering training center. After the war, the BBC kept the buildings built especially for the training center and sold the country house, which then became a hotel. English Heritage has listed it as a Grade II Historic Building.
history
Wood Norton had lived in since the Middle Ages. Prince Phillippe, Duc d'Orléans, the last contender for the French throne, once lived there.
The location of the house - hidden in a few acres of sparse forest on a hill facing south - made it ideal for use by government agencies in times of war. In early 1939 the BBC bought the property to relocate its businesses there, away from London and other major cities, in the event of war . A number of temporary buildings were hastily erected around the country house to accommodate an emergency broadcast center.
A dozen studios were built and in 1940 Wood Norton was one of the largest broadcasting centers in Europe with an average of 1,300 programs per week.
Many refugees from all over war-torn Europe were recruited and then quartered in Evesham and the surrounding area. They became specialized broadcast personnel for resistance and reaction troops across Europe, who broadcast their secret reports hidden in apparently normal entertainment programs.
The BBC's enemy broadcasting station was also located there from August 1939 to early 1943. Then it was moved to Caversham Park and Crowsley Park House near Reading . This was done to make room in Wood Norton Hall so that the property could be expanded to become the main BBC broadcasting station in the event that London had to be evacuated due to the threat of German V-weapons .
A fire during the war destroyed the upper floors of the country house.
After the war, the '' BBC Engineering Training Department '' was housed in Wood Norton House. During the Cold War it was designated as a broadcasting center in the event of a nuclear war.
In March 2013, the BBC moved out of the Television Center (TVC) in West London and had to relocate. The Satellite Earth Station (SES) was built in Wood Norton to accommodate the shared infrastructure that was previously housed in the TVC.
The nuclear bunker
In 1966 and until the late 1960s, the Bredon Wing was built as an extension to the training center; it contained a 53 meter long nuclear bunker in the basement. On the hill behind the country house, a mast with an SHF bowl was built for the radio broadcasting station in Daventry (mentioned in cabinet papers from 1975, published December 30, 2005).
Two FM - Yagi-Uda antennas were installed to receive signals from the transmitting stations in Holme Moss and Llandrindod Wells to receive. Another SHF connection was later made to the Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham to ensure safe TV reception in the training center because the local terrestrial TV signal was weak.
The bunker - PAWN (Protected Area Wood Norton) called -, the mast and many other facilities were called "Deferred Facilities" by the BBC. Few employees knew its full scope and those who knew it had to be authorized by the Department of Defense and sign the Official Secrets Act (OSA). But in the 1970s, when the area of the training studio in Wood Norton was bigger than ever before, the bunker was opened and became available for general training purposes. The local staff were disappointed when they saw it was only two stories deep.
The "Deferred Facilities" have been changed several times over time. In the 1970s they were expanded and modernized so that they were suitable for the Wartime Broadcasting Service .
BBC Academy
The BBC's training department had been on the property since World War II; now it's called the College of Technology , part of the larger BBC Academy . Training staff offer on-site courses, travel to deliver courses at other BBC locations in the UK and design interactive courses for use on the BBC intranet.
Because Wood Norton Hall was a handy BBC facility, the 1970s Spearhead from Space, part of the Doctor Who series, was filmed there. The recordings also contained shots in the nuclear bunker and everyone involved had to sign the OSA and promise not to reveal anything about the existence of this bunker. Later all the interior shots for the 1974 episode Robot from the Doctor Who series were filmed there.
Under the leadership of Greg Dyke and Director of Equipment Mike Southgate , the BBC sold the trainee accommodation that the company had built 20 years earlier.
Wood Norton Hall itself became a privately owned hotel and conference center. The hotel closed its doors in 2005, but reopened the following year under new management. The hotel finally closed in 2010 and was sold to an investor from London in 2011. It was renovated for £ 4m and reopened in November 2012 as part of the Bespoke Hotel Group . Today it is no longer associated with this group. The BBC continues to operate its Technical and Operational Training Center on the sprawling property.
Individual references and comments
- ^ Wood Norton - the emergency broadcasting center . History of the BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ↑ The official name in the 1980s was BBC Monitoring .
- ↑ The BBC bunker they don't want you to know about in The Independent , October 31, 2010. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ^ BBC Wood Norton - Bredon Wing Satellite Dish Project . Jacobs. ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ↑ Wood Norton Hall . Subbrit.org.uk. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ^ Skills, development and training schemes to help everyone educate, inform and entertain . BBC Academy. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ^ Spearhead from Space . Shannon Sullivan. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ↑ This is mentioned in the commentary subtitles of the DVD of “Spearhead from Space”.
- ↑ Robot . Shannon Sullivan. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
literature
- Olive Renier, Vladimir Rubinstein: Assigned to Listen - The Evesham Experience 1939-43 . BBC External Services, 1986. ISBN 0-563-20508-3
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 7 ′ 19.9 ″ N , 1 ° 58 ′ 36.1 ″ W.