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 examining Soviet communications under the aegis of Government Communications Headquarters[6] until it was closed in 1995;[5] the property was then sold into private ownership in 1997.[2]
References
- ^ "Woodhead Hall, Cheadle". Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ^ a b c d "Woodhead Hall, Cheadle, Staffordshire" (PDF). Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ^ "Ministry of Defence hid microwave phone-tap tower inside nuclear plant". Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ^ "Y Station Cheadle". The Parish Of Caverswall. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ^ a b "Codebreaker Ernest, 91 yesterday, is finally honoured with medal". The Sentinel. 16 October 2009. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ^ "How Cheltenham entered America's backyard". New Scientist. 5 April 1984. Retrieved 12 December 2014.