Woodhead Hall

Woodhead Hall is a country house at Cheadle in Staffordshire. It is a Grade II listed building.[1]

History

Woodhead Hall was originally commissioned by a Mr Leigh and completed in 1720.[2] It was acquired by William Allen, a merchant, in the 1840s and completely rebuilt by William Shepherd Allen to the designs of William Sugden in 1873.[2] It remained in the Allen family, passing to William Allen in 1915, until it became a preparatory school in 1925.[2] At the start of the Second World War it became RAF Cheadle[3] and, as a Y-station, started monitoring important enemy signals information.[4] The main task was to intercept messages from German bombers and ground stations.[5]

The hall continued as a monitoring station during the Cold War, with operations transferring to become part of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in January 1964 when all ministries' civilian interception sites came under its control.[6] GCHQ Cheadle continued to monitor Soviet communications.[7] The station closed in 1995 and the property was sold into private ownership in 1997.[5][2]

References
  1. Historic England, "Woodhead Hall (1253648)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 4 December 2017
  2. "Woodhead Hall, Cheadle, Staffordshire" (PDF). Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  3. "Ministry of Defence hid microwave phone-tap tower inside nuclear plant". Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  4. "Y Station Cheadle". The Parish Of Caverswall. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  5. "Codebreaker Ernest, 91 yesterday, is finally honoured with medal". The Sentinel. 16 October 2009. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  6. "The story of Signals Intelligence 1914-2014". GCHQ. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  7. "How Cheltenham entered America's backyard". New Scientist. 5 April 1984. Retrieved 12 December 2014.

53.0006°N 1.9644°W / 53.0006; -1.9644

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.