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More than 200 radar stations were dotted throughout Britain during the Second World War, although very few survive intact today. A number of these were Chain Home Low, or CHL stations, so named because they could detect enemy aircraft flying at very low altitudes, often as little as 500 feet from the ground.
These stations used radar, then still very much in its infancy, to scan for enemy aircraft and ships, reporting their observations to a nearby central operations room. In providing early warning of German aerial attacks, they played a crucial role in the air defence of the country during the Battle of Britain.
The remains of the former CHL station pictured here are located on a coastal escarpment just a short distance north of the village of Craster, in Northumberland. At the end of last year, the Craster station was awarded Grade II- listed status by Historic England, in recognition of its role as a ‘physical reminder of wartime tensions and fears, and the need for a national defence system’. The ruins of a very different form of national defence, the 14th-century Dunstanburgh Castle, are visible in the background.
Built in 1941 and used continuously until 1944, the Craster CHL station was formed of two principal buildings: a transmitter and receiver block, on which the radar equipment was based, and a neighbouring powerhouse to provide energy. Both are intact and, inside, equipment such as generator beds and cable-ducting are still in situ.
The site would normally have been operated by one non-commissioned officer and a dozen or so men of other ranks, who formed the Coast Observer Detachments. Nine guards protected the site, which would have been surrounded by gun posts and barbed-wire entanglements. Two cooks would also have been on the staff.
The Craster CHL had a brief post-war history, as now-dismantled Nissen huts in the vicinity were used to house Italian prisoners of war until 1947. By the 1960s, the site had been cleared, leaving only the operational and generator building still standing.
Also among the more than 220 historic buildings and sites recognised by Historic England last year are an innovative 1980s leisure centre in Doncaster, a Lancashire church designed in the form of an upturned boat, and England’s earliest known ‘modern-day car wash’, dating from 1600, on the old road between London and Cambridge.
Text: Calum Henderson Image: Historic England
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