BT Tower sold.

[electronicskip]

Just read that the iconic BT Tower has been sold off to a company to turn it into a hotel.
Does this mean that all broadcasting/telephony/internet activities will finally cease from the tower?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68352275

[paulsherwin]

Yes. It's already largely an office block. The telecoms, broadcasting and military technologies used have changed completely since the 1960s.

[Julesomega]

They say "The tower was primarily used by television broadcasters for sending signals"
That's sending, not broadcasting! I expect there's plenty of Tetra services still there, and maybe some DAB broadcasts are still there.

[paulsherwin]

Its primary purpose was as the London node of the Post Office microwave network, which has been completely replaced with fibre optic and satellite technology. It was a dual use network, carrying both civilian and military traffic. If you look at any of the towers today, none of them have microwave horns or dishes. I think a few are listed structures, such as the one in Birmingham, but most of them only survive because it would cost a lot to demolish them (many were intended to survive a nearby nuclear explosion).

[G6Tanuki]

Yes it's not really been used for its original design intent for any of this century, the 1960s microwave links were already being decommissioned in the late 1980s when I got to take a group of visiting international academics up the tower on a specially arranged visit, it being closed to normal visits because it had been subjected to several bomb hoaxes.

I hope that whoever has taken it on had a deeply aggressive asbestos survey done, when I visited there were plenty of warning signs scattered around the place.

[electronicskip]

There is one only a few miles from me in Wotton-Under edge BT Tower which is made of reinforced concrete of course.and to the Chilterns design.
Interesting link here to its history.

https://www.dgsys.co.uk/btmicrowave/sites/218.php

[paulsherwin]

The 'Chilterns' design name came from the Stokenchurch one, which is a very prominent landmark beside the 'grand canyon' M40 cutting. Stokenchurch carried a lot of traffic for nearby military sites so is a very substantial structure.

Robert Harris's novel The Second Sleep is set in a future 800 years after a global civilisational collapse. The Chilterns towers are some of the few structures surviving from the old world.

[emeritus]

I took this photo of what I think is the Stokenchurch one, from a moving coach when on the way to Oxford from Essex on a school trip at Easter 1964 or 1965.

There is still a very wide-based bomb-resistant lattice mast at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex, midway between Ongar and Brentwood, that is clearly visible from the A128. It was no doubt associated with the nearby secret nuclear bunker that is now open to the public.

[Buzby123]

I've only been up the PO Tower once, probably in 1969, on a family visit to London. I was not even a teenager back then, so my memory of it is a bit sparse.

I remember the restaurant,and the views across London, but not much else. I just felt like I was in a preview of the future, which was going to be all glass towers and flying cars.

When it shut after the bombs I didn't think I'd ever get another chance, but now I might.

[Beobloke]

My sister worked for BT for 30 years and has been up it a couple of times, but she never managed to blag me an invitation, which always saddened me!

I hope the new owners keep the revolving restaurant operational.

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by emeritus

I took this photo of what I think is the Stokenchurch one, from a moving coach when on the way to Oxford from Essex on a school trip at Easter 1964 or 1965.

That's very possible. The old A40 passes very close to the tower before zigzagging down the escarpment into Oxfordshire.

All the Chilterns towers are highly visible for miles around for obvious reasons. They were controversial when built, but the defence links meant that fortress like structures went ahead.

[dave walsh]

My sister-in-law used to live at Stokenchurch so I was used to going past that one. It was all very hush hush in the sixties and a major defence assett [in case a nuclear attack took took out the conventional landlines or the radio communications]. As a youngster I used to often cycle into Heaton Park [North of Bury-now Greater Manchester] where a tower was going up with only a very minimal mention in the press. I was "advised" to leave the area on one occasion because of my interest in it's growth. I was quite indignant about that at the time! It was quite difficult to find out where they all were back then although the starting point appeared to be the one in London. [I 'd wondered if the Restaurant, was in fact, a bit of a decoy?] Later on, books like "Beneath The City Streets" [by Peter Lawrie] were more revealing.

A friend of mine joined the GPO and had a job servicing the micro wave horns at the London end. He was firmly advised not to stand in front of a live one if he anticipated having children in the future. [We were all about 20 yrs old then!] I couldn't get in on the technical side but I did get a clerical post in their HGV Depot at Cheetham Hill. When I transferred to the Sunley Towers block in Piccadilly Gardens later, I was shown an annonymous grey steel door in a building nearby that apparently led you down several stories beneath that particular "city street" to some sort of comms centre. Like Edinburgh, Manchester was built upon a previous city and is riddled with underground passageways! They used to run tours in the 80's!

Dave W

I see there is a 2017 Manchester Evening News article. "The Remarkable Secret History of Heaton Park Tower".

[gingpeakin]

I was unlucky that I was going to be taken to the restaurant for my birthday but the bomb in 1971 put a stop to that. However I did go up it for work a few years ago when most of the antennas had been removed. The BT people there said that there is a very large conical base underground so the whole thing is the shape of a golf tee.

Ging

[bobbyball]

My father and I went to London one day in the 1970's, it would have been at least 1977, and when we walked past the Tower, Tottenham Court Road being a favourite place at the time, it was "50p" to go up if I recall. We passed! This doesn't correlate with it being closed in the early 70's, perhaps they still had occasional openings...

[paulsherwin]

When the system was being designed in the mid 50s, planners were still thinking in terms of WW2 area bombing and Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons, and it was envisaged that the big city towers would survive all but a direct hit which was considered highly unlikely. The London tower was expected lose its curtain walling and most of the horns, but the tower itself would remain usable and would be reactivated within a few hours of an attack.

Of course, by the time the towers had actually been built and the network had gone live we were in the era of huge city-busting H bombs delivered by missiles, and the towers wouldn't have withstood one of those.

The revolving restaurant was closed after the 1971 bomb, but limited public access continued until the newly privatised BT stopped it for security reasons (and probably also to cut costs).

[Keith956]

I live within sight of the Stokenchurch tower, the microwave dishes on it have all but disappeared in the last 15-20 years. It's looking a bit forlorn these days.

The 60's 'Backbone' network is described in Duncan Campbel's 'War Plan UK' which although rather dated (1983) is still an interesting read.

[dave walsh]

Apparently the Heaton Park tower is the Stokenchurch Chilterns design [further north] Paul [p7*]. I'll check out the Robert Harris book now that I see there is a North/South connection. My son was a volunteer with the schools world Wide Project in Africa. For quite a while, ironically, he only had the one book I'd sent him off with-"Enigma" by RH, which started off the whole Bletchley Park revival.

Dave W

[bobbyball]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

The revolving restaurant was closed after the 1971 bomb, but limited public access continued until the newly privatised BT stopped it for security reasons (and probably also to cut costs).

That's probably why we would have been able to go up. We must have thought 50p was a lot of money then. Wish we had paid it!

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Keith956

The 60's 'Backbone' network is described in Duncan Campbel's 'War Plan UK' which although rather dated (1983) is still an interesting read.

The Wiki article linked in #4 has a section on the Backbone system, and there's much more stuff around the net if you google. Most information about it has been declassified for many years.

[red16v]

Working in central London for ITV all our permanently leased circuits went through the tower. Posties job was to connect up different circuits as required according to a routine schedule provided by the ITA/IBA. It was a very reliable operation but sometimes there would be a cock up and circuit A was not connected to circuit B for some reason or other -usually an issue 'our' end. A quick call to the tower, which we were directly connected to via a 4 wire comms circuit, usually resulted in corrective action being taken within seconds. As a thank you we sent them case of scotch every Christmas although I never got to take it there myself. Pity looking back.