Rosanna Tich visits Bawdsey Radar Museum – Britain’s innovative alarm bell
Suffolk is known for the peacefulness of its coast – but those placid beaches and brooding marshlands have long been vulnerable to hostile raids. Hence the reason why the epicentre of the race to develop defensive radar in the 1930s was the south Suffolk littoral: most notably at Orford Ness, but also at Bawdsey.
Orford Ness is a National Trust site which lures record-breaking numbers of visitors each year with its eerie atmosphere on a shingle spit. Once top-secret MoD land, that has now been reclaimed by nature, it’s justly celebrated and those familiar with its looming structures can continue the story of Radio Direction Finding (RDF) at the Bawdsey Radar Museum. Here, they’ll discover how Suffolk’s covert radar research progressed once the physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt, who arrived in Suffolk in 1935, moved the operation to the Bawdsey Manor Estate. Purchased from the Quilter family and repurposed for defence, RAF Bawdsey became the first fully operational radar station in the world in 1937.
Although the concept of RDF had been around since the early 20th century, it was only 18 months earlier that Sir Robert and his assistant Arnold 'Skip' Wilkins successfully demonstrated aircraft detection by radio waves using a BBC transmitter. Under their watch, Bawdsey became the first Chain Home (CH) early-warning radar station in what was to become a ring of such stations around the south and east coasts, sending information about incoming aircraft to Bentley Priory in Stanmore. Known as the Dowding System, this played a significant role in the success of the Battle of Britain, although it was the US Signal Corps in 1940 that gave it the name ‘Radar’ – an acronym for ‘radio detection and ranging’, which the British subsequently adopted.
Bawdsey Radar Museum is now in the Grade II* transmitter block originally built in 1939. It’s an important piece of British heritage, but despite Bawdsey remaining an RAF station until 1991, during which it housed the Bloodhound surface-to-air missile, by the 1970s it was disused and placed on the Buildings at Risk Register.
Fortunately, it was reopened. The architectural practice Freeland Rees Roberts was appointed by Bawdsey Radar Trust in 2014, and with the assistance of Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic England, restored the brick and concrete (made with local shingle) construction. It opened as a museum in 2017, winning the 2019 Civic Trust AABC Conservation Award and a commendation from the RIBA Suffolk Craftsmanship awards.
This small but perfectly formed museum now manages to pack an awful lot of information into its unusual and restrictive space. Upon entering, the first thing you notice is the massive original switchgear cabinet – apparently, a similar one is still in operation within the London Underground. The main exhibition room is filled with interactive displays taking you through the history of radar, as well as life at Bawdsey during World War II. The exhibits are interwoven with post-war anecdotes, including a rueful poem ‘Rough Justice’, written by Watson-Watt himself, about being caught speeding by a radar in the 1950s. My favourite exhibit at the museum is an interactive piece where one acts as an ‘operator’, tracking incoming enemy aircraft. I was spectacularly bad at this task, but it highlighted how skilled the job was and the sheer speed at which the operatives had to work.
It was also fascinating to find out how women played a key role at RAF Bawdsey, and how many of the first-generation Royal Air Force and Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) radar personnel were trained there. Watson-Watt was unhappy with many of the male operators, and in 1937 suggested that the Air Ministry conduct a five-day trial with three female secretaries. He recalled in 1957, rather paternalistically, that “after one week of training, they were all excellent operators; one of them was the third best radar operator in the world – I claimed the world championship for myself with ‘Skip’ Wilkins as a close runner up.”
Sitting in the sun with Clare Sullivan, co-chair of the Bawdsey Radar Trust, I heard her describe what life was like for those stationed there: the enemy attacks, the unorthodox social life, how the transmitter towers – the final one being demolished in 2000 – are mentioned in Arthur Ransome’s book ‘We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea’ (part of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series), and some amusing tales of pre-war attempts by the Germans to find out what was going on at Bawdsey. Testament to the rise in interest in Bawdsey, in 2014 a film called Castles in the Sky came out with Eddie Izzard playing Watson-Watt.
On Clare’s suggestion, I followed up my museum visit by stopping off at East Lane, a track where the full picture of several hundred years of defence of the realm comes into stark view. WWII concrete pill boxes are dotted around, while to the north lies Orford Ness with its abstract constructions; then, there is Shingle Street, which has its own wartime mystery – a new documentary by Tim Curtis, Fire Over Shingle Street, explores the persistent rumours about the Germans landing here and how the sea was allegedly set alight to keep them at bay. Ranged along the whole stretch of coast are the majestic Martello towers, built in the early 1800s to defend Britain against Napoleon. There are six between Bawdsey and Shingle Street alone, showing that this beautiful part of Suffolk has long been a canary in the mine.
Bawdsey Radar Museum is run by volunteers and is open on Thursdays and Sundays from April to November. Vist the Bawdsey Radar website for more information.