Brown's Point, Radio Telegraph (Y) Station

A timber shed and radio station masts were built here in 1906-7 by the Amalgamated Radio Telegraph Company, who had formed in 1906 through the merger of the British De Forest Wireless Telegraph Syndicate (Lord Armstrong was an owner) and Poulsen and Pedersen's Danish wireless company. The station was used experimentally to send and receive messages from Denmark. The Amalgamated Radio Telegraph Company collapsed in 1907 when Lord Armstrong became bankrupt, and the site was sold to the Poulsen Arc Company of Debmark, who were forced to operate in Britain by the restrictive Danish broadcasting laws. In 1912 the site was taken over by the GPO, who used Marconi equipment, which resulted in the construction of new antennae, apparently supervised by Guglielmo Marconi himself. The Admiralty took over the running of the station during WW1 to use it as a base for intercepting German radio traffic. In 1916 a new brick building replaced the original timber shed. During the 1920s, when radio technology continued to improve, the arc-gap equipment was replaced by valve transmitters. A second building was constructed in 1926 to cater for the increase in staffing. Little is known about the use of the site in WW2. The site was bombed and the staff were enlisted into the Home Guard. In 1951 new transmitters were installed and new aerials, although the use of the aerials was short-lived as they became unstable and were moved to Hartley in the 1950s. Masts did survive on the site into the 1990s however - the site continued in use as the receiver site for the new aerials, until the need for 24 hour emergency watch for distress calls in morse was discontinued in 1998. It continued as part of the radiotelephony Coast Radio Station service until 1999. LISTED GRADE 2