Local History

Few people know that Ottringham was the home of many of the BBC’s broadcasts during the war, and that its transmissions were received well into the heart of occupied Europe.

The site was intended to broadcast both medium and long wave services and propaganda to Europe.

Before the construction of the site the BBC used existing sites at Daventry, Droitwich and Bookman’s Park, however these sites were only ever intended to be used as a temporary solution. Ottringham was selected, and was soon the centre of the BBC’s wartime broadcasts.

With an output power of 800 kilowatts on both long and medium wave, BBC Ottringham or O.S.E.5 was the most powerful transmitter in the world during World War Two. Four transmitters operated on the site, with one relaying the Home Service, now known as Radio Four to the East Riding and Northern Lincolnshire throughout the war.

Only a select group of people worked at the highly secure site, Grace Magee being one of them. Mrs Magee now lives in Northamptonshire, but can clearly remember her duties and what the site looked like. “There was a large office block. There was an office for the Engineer in Charge, another for the assistant Engineer in Charge and the general office where I worked. There was store cupboard in the office block; a very well equipped kitchen ran by a cook and an assistant, with a nice canteen supplying meals for the staff. A large power house and operating system, with three diesel generator sets in case of power failure was very, very noisy”

Control room

Aerial masts 500 feet high towered up in the sky. Wavelengths were often changed as they coincided with other channels, including a German built station to boost the voice of Lord Haw-Haw and marine distress signals.

Engineers manned the control room desks which were a maze of dials and switches, monitoring all the programmes, the timing of which was most important.

The station had a guardhouse, with guards on duty and ID passes had to be shown before entering. Anti-Aircraft camps surrounded the BBC compound for protection against enemy air-raids.

A BBC Club was provided in Queen Street, Withernsea, with games rooms, snooker tables etc. A bus was used to take the engineers into Ottringham for the day, evening and night shifts, as most of the staff lodged or lived in Withernsea.

An engineer monitors the equipment

BBC Ottringham was not abandoned for some time after the war. The station actually transmitted until the 15th of February 1953, and closed due to lack of funding and available channels.

Shortly after closure the transmitters, like much of the equipment, was re-used at another site. The transmitters were moved to a new site in Droitwich where they broadcast Radio1 and Radio 4 on medium wave and Radio 2 on long wave until well into the 1970’s, when the Droitwich site was updated and re-equipped with new modern high efficiency transmitters.

The 95-acres and 38,000 square feet of buildings were sold to a local farmer on the 25th of June 1959, for just £5,100.

So what has become of the site now? Well, the control centre, now unrecognisable, due to the new cladding is now home to Redhall engineers making temporary building units.

Thanks to John Clappison for kindly supplying photographs.