One of the former transmitter blocks of RAF Ringstead in 2011

RAF Ringstead is a former Royal Air Force radar station at Ringstead Bay, Dorset, England. It is notable for having served three separate functions: first as a Chain Home early-warning radar station during WWII and then, during the Cold War, as a Rotor station and then, finally, as a USAF Tropospheric scatter station. The first of these functions commenced in 1942; the last of the functions ceased in 1974. The structural remains were Grade II listed in 2020.[1]

Chain Home

Chain Home was a ring of early warning radar stations built around the coastline as part of WWII defences from the late 1930s onwards.[1]

RAF Ringstead Chain Home Radar Station (known as AMES12B and CH12B) was built in 1941, and was fully operational by March 1942. [1] It was designed with well-dispersed structures: doubled-up transmitter and receiver blocks, a substation and a standby set house in earth-bound bunkers, four 325ft steel transmitter aerial masts and two 240ft self-supporting timber receiver aerial towers. [1] Ringstead Chain Home was stood down in 1945. [1]

Rotor station

In 1952, the former Chain Home station was refurbished into a Rotor station site (known as SRD).[1] The Rotor programme was developed to update previous wartime radar technology and to install more capable radar systems to detect and locate fast-flying jets.[1] The former Chain Home station became the technical site of the Rotor station; Upton Farm, 2 km to the north, became the domestic site, where personnel were accommodated.[1] It closed in 1956. [1]

Tropospheric scatter

View of Ringstead Bay with the two large radar masts in the distance in 1966
Ringstead Bay and the station's two parabolic aerials in circa 1970

In 1963, a USAF Tropospheric scatter station was established at Ringstead to provide a cross-channel relay link from High Wycombe Atomic Joint Co-Ordination Centre to a counterpart network in Gorramendi, near Elizondo, in the Spanish Pyrenees.[1][2] Two parabolic aerials were erected as part of this refurbishment.[1] The Tropospheric Scatter station was operated by USAF No 6 Detachment, 2180 Communications Squadron, [3] and closed in 1974. [1]

Legacy

The Tropospheric Scatter station parabolic aerials were dismantled in 1975.[3] The Wessex Hang Gliding Club use the field where the aerials were formerly located for emergency landings.[4]

The bunker is on land owned by the National Trust, and the Trust occasionally run open days.[5]

The radar station was listed Grade II in 2020, as one of the best-preserved Chain Home stations in southwest England, and as such a rare example of its type.[1] One of the two transmitting blocks is proposed for conversion to holiday accommodation.[1] Planning permission was granted in 2021 for a conversion designed by Lipton Plant Architects.[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 "Historic England List Entry No 1472715". Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  2. ↑ "Subterranea Britannica: ACE High NATO Communications System". Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Geograph: SY7681 – Ringstead Bay c 1970". Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  4. ↑ "Hang Gliding History: Ringstead". hghistory.org. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  5. ↑ "Where Can We Go: Ringstead Bay Radar Station Open Day". wherecanwego.com. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  6. ↑ Lea, Martin (31 July 2021). "How war bunker at Ringstead will look when it becomes holiday accommodation". Dorset Echo. Retrieved 26 August 2021.

50°38′04″N 2°20′37″W / 50.634353°N 2.3435399°W / 50.634353; -2.3435399

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