"Secret Base" locations revealed – Part 1 of 5
Thank you for visiting Part 1 of www.secret-bases.co.uk. Once you've finished browsing this first part, all you need to do is click on buttons at the bottom of this page to move on to the other parts. Please note that this website requires a modern JavaScript enabled browser in order to work properly.
Introduction
What makes a "Secret Base"
secret? By "base", I mean those British Government installations or military sites you've seen surrounded by razor wire fences and guarded by Ministry of Defence (MoD) police. How on earth can these sites be secret? The UK Government hasn't (yet) developed stealth technology in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. So they can't very well make, say, Faslane nuclear submarine base (pictured below) suddenly disappear as you come around the corner.
Having said that, in October 2007, the Sun newspaper revealed in an
exclusive story that boffins at the Government's research wing QinetiQ had got together with Professor John Pendry's theoretical physics team at Imperial College, London to develop Harry Potter style "invisibility cloaks" for military equipment such as tanks.
As revealed back in May 2006, in scientific journals
New Scientist and
Physics World, the technology involves the development of special composite "metamaterials". They have very unusual refractive properties that alter the propagation of light beams. It is thought that the latest top secret research is being carried out on behalf of the MoD at QinetiQ's Nanomaterials Division at Farnborough, Hampshire.
Sir Martin Furnival Jones
MI5 DG 1965 – 1972
No, it's actually much simpler than all that. A Government laboratory or military base can be made to "disappear" by just deleting it from Ordnance Survey (OS) maps. But how? Well, you need to appreciate that OS is essentially a Government agency within the MoD. Just look-up the derivation of the word "ordnance" and all will become clear. It means "military equipment, artillery and provisions".
Apart from straightforward deletion, another classic sign of "tampering" to look for on OS maps is the use of the rather uninformative labels "Works" or "Depot". This is sometimes an indication that a site has important Government and/or military activities. But why? Throughout the late 1960s, Sir Martin Furnival Jones, Director General of MI5 (the Security Service) during the Cold War, insisted that all sensitive sites be labelled on maps in this way, so their true strategic role would be concealed from potential enemy agents.
All inclusions on OS maps were once vetted by the UK Government's
D-Notice Committee. You may have heard of this before. When the Government wanted to "gag" newspaper editors to stop them revealing embarrassing details about MoD-related stories, it was called "slapping a D-Notice" on them. Any locations on the "Sensitive Sites Register" were mysteriously removed from public maps by men in cigar smoke filled rooms in Whitehall and just ended up appearing as farmers' fields.
Sometimes misleading labels on Ordnance Survey maps are good old fashioned foul-ups. Like the map of Stockport Grammar School in my home town. It was corrected in 2018.
Other times, you wonder whether OS map compilers are just mischieviously messing about when you see road names
Bell End and
Mincing Lane – right next to each other in the same town. A further inspection at Google Street View level reveals all. The OS maps are accurate and both street names are very old. There's always a warm welcome at the Christian Heritage Centre in the Bell End Providence Chapel – erected 1875.
I just couldn't ignore the sign outside Culmore Car Centre near the city of Derry, close to the border in Northern Ireland. Fancy a
Muff Wax, missus? It's saucy, it's clever and it's named after the village just up the road over the border. There, you'll also find
Muff Barbers which was previously called Man and Boy.
Some jolly japesters have labelled certain sensitive Government facilities on Google Maps with the company name
"SETEC Astronomy" which is a famous in-joke featured in the 1992 film Sneakers. It is an anagram of "Too Many Secrets". Perhaps it should be observed that it is also an anagram of "Mason Secret Toy" and "Comatose Sentry".
Ordnance Survey's map makers up to their old tricks? The grammar school in my home town of Stockport, Cheshire got an unwelcome makeover, but this time it was nothing to do with MI5. It was eventually corrected in 2018.
In February 2004, the Secretary of the D-Notice Committee, Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, contacted me to assure me that things have changed for the better and that the system has been overhauled in recent years. With the introduction of Internet-based mapping and aerial photography data, he insisted that the Committee is now an independent and purely advisory body. It was to be known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC) and the D-Notices more correctly referred to as Defence Advisory (DA-Notices), as described in Nick Wilkinson's history book Secrecy and the Media published in 2009. It was renamed again in 2015, to the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee, with the DA Notices renamed accordingly DSMA Notices.
Alerted to the issues highlighted on this website, Mr. Wilkinson told me that Ordnance Survey's removal of MoD-related sites from their maps is no longer appropriate in today's Internet climate. He assured me that the fact that they still show sensitive sites as empty fields is because of the time lag between Ordnance Survey becoming aware of the new policy and their publication of new editions of the maps, rather than any sinister Government involvement.
Indeed, the high resolution aerial photography of Britain's "Secret Bases", offered for sale on the Internet by
Getmapping plc, was cleared by Mr. Wilkinson. Even so, various defence analysts raised concerns, as detailed in a
BBC News article. Getmapping's co-founder and MD,
Tristram Cary, is a former Royal Navy officer and software project director in the defence industry.
In February 2007, the Landmark Group mapping company revealed that it had acquired top secret Russian military maps of UK Secret Bases. They had been compiled by the KGB throughout the Cold War years, from 1950 right up to 1997, using their own satellite imagery, making all the fuss somewhat pointless after all.
In June 2007, in a major update to Google Earth's UK imagery, most of the locations featured on this website became available at high resolution. In December 2007, new hi-res aerial imagery was provided by Getmapping which covers the area around Faslane. Check out my special implementation of Microsoft Virtual Earth, which allows you to zoom in close-up to the
Trident Missile Storage Bunkers, warhead handling facilities and much more.
A Russian KGB map from 1975 showing the old wartime RAF munitions dump at Dairyhouse Farm, Sinderland, Broadheath near Altrincham, Cheshire. The buildings to the lower right are the Atlantic Street Industrial Estate
www.old-maps.co.uk
Critical National Infrastructure: a Ministry of Defence Police patrol vehicle monitors traffic outside Bacton Gas Terminal on the Norfolk coast
Google Street View
Not-So-Critical National Infrastructure: spies need a good haircut for a disguise. GCHQ Hair Designers in Brockholes near Holmfirth, West Yorkshire
Google Street View
In "Secret Bases",
www.secret-bases.co.uk, I make use of these
Internet research tools to take you on a fascinating tour of Secret Britain:-
Perhaps you would also like to try my other web pages by visiting my home page at:-
Media coverage and contact details
I have provided a resumé of my media appearances and press coverage of my "Secret Bases" website in my
Media Centre. You will also find full details on how to contact me for contributions, research assistance requests and media enquiries.
Map link options
Upon hitting the "GO" button below, this page will be refreshed with the new map link options you have chosen (or the default ones, if you first use the RESET button).
PRIVACY: If you have enabled "cookies" on your browser, the new settings will also be saved on your computer and will be retrieved when you access this page again. Furthermore, as you navigate between the five parts of the "Secret Bases" website, your map link option settings will be preserved. The "cookie" only contains your map preferences – nothing else. It is just a temporary "current session" cookie and is deleted automatically when you close your browser. For full documentation on the map link options available just click on my
Research Tools Page button also below.
There are some classic signs to look for on OS maps, when trying to find MoD related sites. You might see buildings which are geometrically shaped, like the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and Warship Support Agency (WSA) at
Abbey Wood
in Bristol.
Some are made easy by actually labelling them "Government Offices" like the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) near Bath, on the site of an old country estate at
Ensleigh
and also at
Fox Hill. Of course, not all "Government Buildings" are "Secret Bases". Many buildings labelled in this way are merely administration offices. Since a major restructuring in April 2007, DPA, WSA and DLO have been known as Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S).
The two Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy centre sites in Cheltenham at
Benhall
and
Oakley
don't at first stick out when viewed at 1:50000 scale. View Multimap's aerial photograph of GCHQ Benhall and notice the field just to the west of the main buildings. This is where the brand new GCHQ Doughnut complex has been built.
Following the Doughnut construction at the Benhall site, most of the Oakley site has been demolished and the land has been handed over to a supermarket chain and housing development company. The old parts of the Benhall location have also been cleared and given over to the provision of additional car parking for the Doughnut and for housing development. The remaining GCHQ buildings at Oakley have since been officially known as the GCHQ Harp Hill site, after a nearby road.
Until Summer 2006, if you viewed
GCHQ Benhall
and
GCHQ Oakley
at 1:25000, the old facilities suddenly emerged as geometrically shaped buildings and were labelled "Government Offices". These more detailed 1:25000 OS maps have now finally been updated to reflect all of the demolition work and the new GCHQ Doughnut now makes an appearance. In March 2007, the GCHQ Doughnut finally made it to hi-res on Google Earth too. A comparison of aerial photography from different years also reveals that DE&S Fox Hill has now been fully demolished. A similar comparison at DE&S Ensleigh shows that around half of that site has gone.
GCHQ's new research facility hidden in a forest
Permalink
In January 2007, a proposal for a brand new GCHQ "research and development" installation at the existing
Birdlip Radio Station
on top of Shab Hill, Gloucestershire, was finally thrown out by Cotswold District Council's planning department after an appeal by GCHQ to the Planning Inspectorate was dismissed. The council wanted to protect the nature of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), of which the residents around Barrow Wake Viewpoint are so doggedly proud.
The planning application had originally been lodged precisely one year earlier in January 2006 and the project involved the erection of additional tall lattice communications towers, including one with a huge "golf ball" radome on top. It would have been identical to the one already installed in a
special enclosure
on the west side of Birmingham International Airport, but which is merely used for ground radar (seen in a
Bird's Eye aerial photo).
Likewise, a quite innocent explanation can be found for an identical tower and radome found hidden in
Civiley Wood
at Friningham near Detling and Thurnham, close to Maidstone in Kent. Rather than another GCHQ test facility, it is the Met Office's latest doppler effect weather radar officially opened in October 2005.
Admittedly, adding to the intrigue is the curious location just a few hundred yards away from the legendary
Cold Blow Lane
NATO and WWII ACE High communications facility near Coldblow Farm.
The Birdlip signals station is in a perfect strategic position, in a direct line of sight with the GCHQ Doughnut at Benhall, a few miles away. It has actually been used for various communications purposes since WWII, but the original wartime masts in the surrounding fields have long since gone, leaving only their rusted anchoring points in the ground. Significantly, it is also very close to another relic from World War Two (and indeed the Cold War) – the famous hardened bunker at
Ullenwood, a former Anti Aircraft Operations Room (AAOR), Civil Defence Training Centre and Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQ). The planning application had been made on behalf of GCHQ by Cheltenham-based global communications infrastructure consultants Alan Dick and Company Limited.
More recent users of the Shab Hill facility have included the Civil Aviation Authority (Air Traffic Control), National Grid Wireless (mobile network infrastructure providers – now part of Arqiva) and OFCOM (the Government's monitoring watchdog for general communications).
How intriguing it is to discover that one of the mobile network operators already using the Birdlip facility – O2 – has been awarded the Government contract to provide a Ground Based Network Resilience (GBNR) enhancement known as the National Fallback Service (NFS) to
Airwave. Airwave is the new encrypted secure digital radio system for all emergency services, which uses Motorola's Terrestrial Trunked Radio (
TETRA [PDF, 3MB]) technology. It is part of the Government's
Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).
The GBNR / NFS enhancement – due for delivery in Autumn 2007 – was requested after recommendations arising from the various communications failures at the time of the July 2005 London bus and underground tube train bombings. The original Airwave project was commissioned through the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO), which became part of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in April 2007.
O2 Airwave Limited applied to Cotswold Council in June 2006 for the addition of two extra communications dishes and associated control equipment on one of the lattice towers already on site at Birdlip. The initial request was for one 0.3m diameter dish and one 0.6m dish. Curiously, the request was later amended to two dishes both 0.3m in diameter. The O2 Airwave application was successful.
Edgehills Radio Station,
Mitcheldean, Forest of Dean
It would seem that GCHQ would legitimately require a connection into Airwave at Birdlip in order to provide the emergency "MACA" role – Military Aid to Civilian Authorities. But was GCHQ's so-called "experimental, testing, research and development" facility at Birdlip going to be wired into the O2 Airwave system for further purposes too?
Do you remember another "experimental" communications site for "research" in the 1990s? It was known as the Capenhurst Tower and the story surrounding that sent political shock waves around the world.
Was their cunning plan at Birdlip scuppered by a brave decision by Cotswold Council? Would GCHQ go to the High Court for a further appeal and risk even more details getting out into the public domain? Would they perhaps consider the famous sites of microwave towers and communications masts at
Cleeve Hill
and
Churchdown Hill
both near Cheltenham and at
Bredon Hill
near Evesham, Worcestershire?
Instead, they found another location – and a different more compliant council. In Summer 2008, GCHQ finally got permission for a pair of towers to be hidden in the Forest of Dean close to the various existing microwave, radio and TV communication towers at Little Dean Walk within Edgehills Plantation, Plump Hill near Mitcheldean.
The
GCHQ Edgehills
facility comprises a long narrow forest clearing with a northern tower and southern tower, only one of which will have a radome fixed to the top. In April 2010,
new aerial photography became available which reveals the GCHQ towers at Edgehills.
In June 2007, Airwave applied to Dartmoor National Park Authority to establish a mast on farmland near
Widecombe-in-the-Moor
but the Authority resisted until October 2008 when they suddenly pulled out of the appeal process after Airwave presented hundreds of extra pages of evidence just days before the deadline. The planning consultant representing Airwave in their appeal at Widecombe – Ian Waterson of Town Planning Solutions Ltd, Telford – also worked on getting the GCHQ Edgehills project accepted by Forest of Dean Council.
Read the amazingly detailed documents forming all the separate GCHQ and O2 Airwave planning applications at Birdlip, Edgehills and Dartmoor – including correspondence, technical drawings, photos and diagrams – gathered all together here in a new special Secret Bases page (above right).
EDS / DXC Mitcheldean Data Centre for sale – August 2022
In Summer 2008, the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper carried a story developed from a letter sent in from an elderly former Forest of Dean District Councillor – also at one time a member of the Royal Signals. He was convinced of a top secret CIA base within the forest and even a sinister underground facility in the area. The news headline screamed, "Has the Pentagon built a secret spy bunker in Gloucestershire?"
Amazingly, the old chap wasn't that far from the truth, even though he'd got carried away with the fine detail. It is obviously the new GCHQ test station at Edgehills he means. As for the bunker, look no further than a huge ultra-secure and ultra-secretive
underground computer data server centre
at Mitcheldean, on the north side of the Vantage Point Business Village – an industrial estate on the old Rank Xerox factory site.
Rather than CIA, it was run by the global computer services corporation EDS – who just happen to have some very sensitive and lucrative contracts with the UK Government including the MoD, HMRC (formerly Inland Revenue and Customs) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Transport for London's Oyster Card ticketing system was managed through EDS Mitcheldean's servers too. From 2008, EDS was part of that Government contract stalwart Hewlett Packard (HP) and later became part of DXC Technology.
The EDS / DXC Data Centre was embroiled in yet another of those now regular data loss scandals in September 2008 when it was finally admitted that a 500GB portable external hard drive was mislaid in July 2007, whilst being sent from there to another key
EDS base
within Government Buildings housing DWP at Washington, Tyne and Wear. Unfortunately it contained personal details of over 5000 HMP staff including prison officers. To make matters even worse, the loss was not reported for a full year.
In Summer 2022, the Mitcheldean data centre – formally referred to as "Building 9.3" – at Vantage Point Business Village, previously used by EDS and DXC for critical Government IT contracts, was put up for sale and a detailed
property brochure was published by agents CBRE. The data centre was even advertised on
Rightmove.
The
EDS blunders continued in October 2008. A routine audit reported another portable hard drive – used for around 100,000 Army, Royal Navy and RAF personnel and up to 600,000 Armed Services recruitment records – was missing from yet another supposedly "secure" EDS location on the
Bartley Wood Business Park
alongside the M3 motorway at Hook near Basingstoke, Hampshire. A later
statement made in Parliament revealed that the actual number of potential recruits' details compromised was nearer 1.7 million.
Consider also the
EDS Data Centre at Wynyard, Billingham
on Teesside, the location of the former Samsung monitor and microwave factory. This former distribution warehouse has been converted to state of the art low energy data processing server halls. Projects running through the building include highly sensitive contracts for DWP, Centrica and the Ministry of Justice. Next door, Cleveland Police's Roads Policing Unit keeps one eye on the perimeter.
While the Hook base is UK HQ of EDS Defence, the Central Stores and Engineering Services Group (ESG) is located at
Ashchurch Business Centre
near Tewkesbury back in Gloucestershire, next to the M5. That is where military computer systems are designed, developed, assembled and tested. Meanwhile, EDS have yet more "secure" operations based within the
HMRC Data Centre
in Telford, Shropshire and the DWP's
Peel Park Control Centre
in Blackpool, Lancashire.
The location for GCHQ's new test and development facility for trialling new interception and communications equipment. Hidden in a clearing within the Forest of Dean at Little Dean Walk, Edgehills Radio Station, Plump Hill, near Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire
Aerial photography Getmapping / IntermapOriginal mapping data www.magic.gov.uk
GCHQ Edgehills radome tower in the Forest of Dean near Mitcheldean
DXC / EDS Data Centre at Vantage Point Business Village, Mitcheldean, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire
The site was advertised for sale in Summer 2022 by property agents CBRE
DXC / EDS Data Centre at Vantage Point Business Village, Mitcheldean
The site was advertised for sale in Summer 2022 by property agents CBRE
Copyright © CBRE
EDS Data Centre bunker (top in each picture) at Mitcheldean. Spot the difference. OS maps catch up with the aerial photography
Map images generated from the
Get-a-map service
with permission of
Ordnance Survey
Looking east across EDS Data Centre (middle) at Wynyard Business Park, Billingham, Teesside with Clipper Logistics distribution warehouse and the A19 in the background and Cleveland Police's Roads Policing Unit in the foreground
Bird's Eye view looking west across GCHQ's Maidstone Test Facility in Kent? No. Just Thurnham Doppler Weather Radar Station for the Met Office
Bing Bird's EyeAn existing tower at Birdlip Radio Station, Shab Hill, Gloucestershire
Photo: "mjt1410" at www.webshots.com
Aerial view of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Abbey Wood, Bristol
Bird's Eye view of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Ensleigh near Bath
Bing Bird's Eye
Bird's Eye view of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Fox Hill near Bath
Bing Bird's Eye
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Fox Hill near Bath. Comparing aerial photos from 2013 (left) and 2014 (right) shows demolition of the whole site
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Ensleigh near Bath. Comparing aerial photos from 2009 (left) and 2014 (right) shows demolition of half of the site
By 2019 the old MoD Ensleigh site was a new housing estate
Google Maps 3D
Getmapping, the company providing the aerial photography for many Internet mapping web sites, has repeatedly announced improved resolution data – the flights for which were performed in 2002 and 2006. This new data is currently only available for a few selected towns and cities. As luck would have it, Cheltenham is one of those places.
Compare the images (further below left to right, taken in 2006, 2002 and 1999). Note how a few of the old GCHQ Benhall buildings were demolished to make way for the Doughnut. Since that original 1999 photo was taken, the old buildings at Benhall have now gone completely, as revealed on the Bird's Eye view from Windows Live Local. At GCHQ Oakley, a similar Bird's Eye view now reveals that only the eastern end of the Priors Road site remains (for now). The western end nearest the main road has been totally cleared and the new Sainsbury's store is in its place.
In its June 2006 edition, Gloucestershire's glossy lifestyle magazine Cotswold Life even featured a large high quality aerial photo of the GCHQ Doughnut on its front cover with the banner headline, "Secret Sights – our 10 best buildings viewed from the air".
After WWII, GCHQ set up an "experimental radio station", a top secret research facility, on the site of the RAF's wartime airfield at
Blakehill Farm, Cricklade near Swindon, Wiltshire (pictured further below in a Pilot's Eye View, from my regular expert contributor). It was not too far away from GCHQ's new post-war HQ in Cheltenham. It consisted of huge communications masts arranged in mysterious strategic patterns in the middle of the old airfield and the site was still active in some capacity until the mid 1990s.
Excited conspiracy theorists have got in touch urging me to consider the possibility of another GCHQ Doughnut under construction just north of Biggin Hill airfield in Kent, in the middle of
Keston Common. However, a simple investigation and a look at the corresponding
Bird's Eye view reveals it to be a Bryant Homes / Taylor-Wimpey development of posh apartments originally known as The Crescent and now Wilberforce Court. A nearby road is called Jackass Lane which sums things up nicely, don't you agree?
Another GCHQ Doughnut (top) hidden in Keston Common, Holwood Park, Kent? No. Just a development of posh apartments (bottom) called The Crescent
Bing Bird's Eye
GCHQ Benhall through the ages. Top to bottom: 1952, 1990, 2001, 2010
© Integrated Accommodation Services / GCHQ
The 2006, 2002 and 1999 versions (first three top to bottom) of Getmapping's image of GCHQ Benhall; 2006 and 2002 versions of GCHQ Oakley (next two)
Bird's Eye view of GCHQ Benhall in 2006. GCHQ Doughnut (left) and new housing being built on original site (right)
Bing Bird's EyeOfficial press office aerial photo of GCHQ Benhall in 2008
© GCHQ
GCHQ Doughnut at Benhall was further expanded with an additional office block (top right)
Google Maps 3D
Bird's Eye view of GCHQ Oakley in 2006. Part of original site demolished (left) leaving the remaining eastern section
Bing Bird's EyeGCHQ Oakley, Harp Hill (main building) as seen from the new housing estate that replaced the western section
Google Street ViewSign of the times at GCHQ's security perimeter fence
UK Census 2011 – Lockheed Martin's secret data processing centre
PermalinkBack in early 2010, Lockheed Martin – the prime contractor for the UK Census programme starting on 27th March 2011 – acquired a "secret" building on a 30-month lease for use as the data processing centre. They set up a special purpose company called UK Data Capture and launched a massive recruitment campaign for the people who would be entrusted to read all your personal details (anonymised) on the census return forms and upload them onto the database. A total of around 1300 jobs were created on fixed term contracts until November 2011.
The media releases boasted "a 180,000 sq. ft. warehouse" somewhere in the famous (and very large) Trafford Park industrial estate in Manchester. The building's quoted capacity narrowed down my search but it was also made much simpler by a senior Lockheed Martin / UK Data Capture employee. He registered an associated corporate website domain on a server whose IP address network – belonging to Lockheed Martin – was itself registered to the precise address of the building.
The
vast warehouse
– on the corner of Marshall Stevens Way and Westinghouse Road – was previously used as a freight distribution hub. The location hit the headlines in April 2008 when a storage warehouse further down Marshall Stevens Way, used by removals company Britannia Bradshaw International, was destroyed by fire. Perhaps it's no surprise that UK Data Capture's glossy media packs didn't feature the unflattering camera angle showing the skip hire scrap yard next door. The Census warehouse was acquired in 2013 by supply chain logistics company Kuehne + Nagel.
Lockheed Martin's / UK Data Capture's 2011 Census data processing centre at Centrepoint 5, Marshall Stevens Way, off Westinghouse Road, Trafford Park, Manchester
Bing Bird's EyeThe camera angle the glossy media packs don't want you to see? Lockheed Martin's / UK Data Capture's 2011 Census data processing centre next to a skip hire scrap yard
Google Street ViewLockheed Martin IP address network for the UK Census 2011 project registered using the building's precise address — with the US spelling of "centre"
Wikileaks exposes two UK secret facilities critical to US Government
Permalink
Includes GTT / Hibernia Express new superfast internet cable station in a seaside funfair
Cablegate leaked memo identifies Internet undersea cable stations
In December 2010, the infamous Wikileaks Cablegate operation to publish secret memos sent between US Embassies revealed a list of worldwide facilities "critical to US Homeland Security". Two such facilities in the UK are Internet submarine cable amplifier stations close to their landing points on the West Coast of Britain in popular seaside towns. They are hidden away inside anonymous buildings on unassuming industrial estates, partially masked by helpfully placed foliage.
They appear on Google Street View and the planning applications lodged with the relevant local councils reveal they were built in 2001 by a telecoms operator responsible for a key Internet cable running under the Atlantic Ocean between the UK and New York.
Exposed in Wikileaks Cablegate memo: Critical to the US Government — an Internet submarine cable amplifier station in Pottington, Barnstaple, Devon
Exposed in Wikileaks Cablegate memo: Critical to the US Government — another Internet submarine cable amplifier station in Highbridge, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset
Cable amplifier station in Highbridge, Burnham-on-Sea
Hi-de-hi. Another Internet submarine cable amplifier station at Hunmanby near the Filey holiday camps
Ho-de-ho. Yet another Internet submarine cable amplifier station near another holiday camp and next to thousands of caravans, back in the South West at Brean Sands, Burnham-on-Sea
What a merry-go-round. A holiday leisure centre with funfair at Brean Sands, Burnham-on-Sea but also ...
The brand new GTT / Hibernia Express superfast internet connection to North America
Connects London and New York at less than
60ms latency,
via Slough; Reading; seaside funfair; Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; and Boston, USA
The GTT / Hibernia Express superfast internet connection to North America
Cable landing station at Brean Sands was constructed in 2015
The GTT / Hibernia Express superfast internet connection to North America
Architect plans submitted to a council in SW England in March 2015
Looks like a military hardened bunker, but it's another internet cable landing station on the sand dunes at Winterton-on-Sea, Great Yarmouth
Inside No. 9: Cable Landing Station within an industrial unit in Lowestoft, Norfolk
A Bed and Breakfast farmhouse in Widemouth Bay, Bude but with a curious signpost mentioning "Cable and Wireless CL Site" – a huge data centre, built in 2001, hidden behind the trees on the right, beyond some poultry sheds
Cable and Wireless CL Site and the poultry sheds at Widemouth Bay
Internet cable repeater at Ash Mill near South Molton, Devon
UKMFTS – the UK Military Flying Training System
PermalinkNew secret HQ under armed guard
In January 2009, I heard stories of a hive of activity surrounding an apparent anonymous building on an equally anonymous office park in Bristol, with reports of MoD armed guards protecting and patrolling the site. I just had to investigate.
Consider the Stoke Gifford area of Bristol and in particular, the Bristol Parkway North office park on Newbrick Road where Barclays Bank has a large operation at the north end of the estate. I was alerted to the "U" shaped building next door to the south east, Unit 1300, more properly known as
Slieve Croob House. Now that name got me thinking straight away. It just happens to be the anglicised version of the Irish Gaelic name for a Northern Ireland range of high peaks south of Belfast which host many microwave towers, including a "Home Office" transmitter. Just an amusing coincidence, as the managing director of the previous company in the building was born and raised around the mountain range and even arranged for the transportation of a rock from the location – which sits at the entrance engraved with the name.
I searched for planning applications and sure enough, I found one
detailing major security upgrades with a very interesting cryptic name for the applicant. But it wasn't who I thought it might be. The applicant was the "UKMFTS-EFT-AJT" project team based at MoD Abbey Wood just down the road towards Filton, described earlier. Actually, it was even more cryptic thanks to a typo error by the council officers who had incorrectly entered it as "UKMETS". In the design and access statement on the council website, another address for UKMFTS was given at a new office block known as
Centenary House
on Palace Street in the city of Norwich next to the Cathedral. It is ostensibly the HQ for Norfolk's Probation Service, but much else besides it would seem.
UKMFTS is the brand new 25-year multi-billion pound joint venture between Lockheed Martin and VT Group known as
Ascent Flight Training. The UKMFTS-EFT-AJT team at Abbey Wood have acquired Slieve Croob House at Stoke Gifford as the main project development HQ where Elementary Flying Training (EFT) and Advanced Jet Training (AJT) on the Hawk 128 Full Mission Simulators (FMS) at RAF Valley will be designed. The UKMFTS will provide all new training for aircrews across all three services, RAF, Royal Navy and Army Air Corps.
Bird's Eye view of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Abbey Wood, Bristol
Bing Bird's EyeBird's Eye view of Ascent Flight Training (Lockheed Martin / VT Group) HQ, UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS), Slieve Croob House, Stoke Gifford, Bristol
Bing Bird's Eye
Ascent Flight Training (Lockheed Martin / VT Group) HQ, UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS), Slieve Croob House, Stoke Gifford, Bristol
Google Street View
Revealed – the secrets hidden inside GCHQ's Room C3301
Permalink
... plus "Whoa! No way Huawei!": proposed equipment
cabinet next to MI5's remote data centre (scroll down)
... plus GCHQ Palmer Street, London
... plus Huawei's Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) "The Cell"
... plus MI5's Room 87: BT Openreach Monitoring Line, and more
In August 2007, I discovered a supposedly "hidden", "members only" website called Room C3301 run by old retired GCHQ comrades, after they had provided a link to my own Secret Bases site. Strange but true. The "Room C3301" website is devoted to the former GCHQ employees' WJCAG club and carries the pre-2002 version of the official GCHQ crest.
The website's main page is called The Hatch. This is a clear reference to special document transfer windows (pictured below right) in security doors separating wireless operator rooms from cipher rooms – as found, for example, in the famous Cold War spy station at
Teufelsberg in West Berlin, Germany [
Bird's Eye aerial photo ].
But what about the meaning of "WJCAG"? One can only hazard a guess at the old "W" and "J" Divisions of GCHQ's Cryptanalysis Group, where "J" was in charge of SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) interception and "W" was responsible for final delivery of SIGINT "product" to "consumer".
They very kindly (but perhaps unwisely!) gave me a totally unsolicited plug in a link titled "Eye Spy" – perhaps a reference to my series of
UK Secrets articles for that magazine. By luck, I detected the link with my special visitor tracker software.
I noticed they were advertising their
5th Reunion Party for "Cypher Grade employees, plus Q4 support personnel" to be held on Friday 14th September 2007 at the
Civil Service Club
on Tewkesbury Road, Uckington, Cheltenham – just to the north of the GCHQ Doughnut.
The main website portal at www.wjcag.co.uk (now defunct) originally invited you to type in the "secret" code number (3301) of the Room, in order to access the supposedly "private" WJCAG club members' area. However, within a matter of seconds, a simple Google search on "WJCAG" got me the individual "hidden" page that members were redirected to upon entering the correct passcode. How hilariously ironic that cracking the GCHQ code was so easy. Not surprisingly, the code was hurriedly changed a few days later and the link to my site was removed, but I'd already made a copy of the contents.
Of special interest were the
Contacts Page and the Archives Section which included huge photo galleries of previous reunions in October 2004 and May 2006, plus articles sent in from club members around the world. A member advertised the famous shop he now runs in the middle of Cheltenham dealing in military memorabilia, specialising in medals, badges and uniforms.
One
contribution referred to the exhausting shift patterns at Oakley. A particularly
fascinating page discussed a member's time spent at GCHQ's old Composite Signals Organisation (CSO) intercept station at the settlement of Two Boats Village on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean and
another article fondly remembered the old days working at
Palmer Street.
I hear from sources close to the retired eavesdroppers that in October 2008, the WJCAG Group was arranging the next reunion at the Civil Service Club for Friday 15th May 2009 at 7pm. The WJCAG website was closed down in December 2009, as the person responsible had decided to retire from webmastering.
The "Government Offices" at 2-14 Palmer Street, near Buckingham Palace in Central London, tucked-in between St. James's Park tube station, a Starbucks Coffee Shop and the Adam & Eve pub, contained a GCHQ international wiretap and telex / fax / email intercept facility also known by the codename "UKC1000". It allegedly incorporated an Echelon Dictionary computer system up on the 4th Floor to scan for "hot" keywords. The rear vehicle entrance – shared with the Ministry of Justice's Clive House on Petty France – can be found around the corner on Vandon Street, next door to British Transport Police's (BTP) garage for emergency response vehicles.
By October 2018, following a £500,000 refit, the BTP garage had been transformed into a DPD parcel distribution hub using all-electric vehicles – known as
DPD Westminster. It is also a DPD Pickup location for customers collecting their own parcels.
Comically, even though it was common knowledge, GCHQ Palmer Street was only finally acknowledged publicly in April 2019, when the Director Jeremy Fleming
announced its closure after 66 years working "in the shadows". Earlier in 2019, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had unveiled a centenary Westminster Green Plaque at the location of GCHQ's 1919 birthplace at Watergate House, on the end of York Buildings off John Adam Street, between The Strand and Victoria Embankment Gardens. Watergate House is now occupied by investment specialists Business Growth Fund (BGF).
As World War II turned into the Cold War, GCHQ ran a clandestine technical department at 10 Chesterfield Street off Mayfair's Park Lane where 60 operators targeted Soviet signals. GCHQ occupied 10 Chesterfield Street from 1944 until 1953, when all London operations were consolidated into Palmer Street. The Chesterfield Street townhouse is now the Bahamas High Commission.
In February 2017, GCHQ officially opened a brand new London office which is designated the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It is very close to the old Palmer Street office but could not be more different. The NCSC has been established inside a commercial development known as Nova South opposite Victoria Underground Station on Victoria Street, next to the Victoria Palace Theatre and Duke of York pub and bounded by Bressenden Place – upon which Nova North is situated.
GCHQ's
NCSC isn't listed on Royal Mail's address database (yet), but the Nova development's glossy sales brochure helpfully lists it as being resident on Floors 6 and 7, sandwiched between the likes of Motorola, Sky Media and executive headhunters Egon Zehnder. Bizarrely, the NCSC shares Floor 6 of Nova South with Australian corporation Brambles which specialises in pallets and crates.
Eyebrows were raised at GCHQ's choice of such a plush office development. An Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) investigation reported in November 2020 that GCHQ had fiddled the figures in the selection process so that the sexy Nova South came out the winner, instead of the more suitable and more reasonably priced Canary Wharf option. Moreover, the extra spend meant that other vital GCHQ work was put in jeopardy.
The ISC report let slip in a tiny footnote on one page that the vague "Canary Wharf" location was actually the well-known government hub at 10 South Colonnade, where many departments have moved, including HMRC and Ministry of Justice.
In March 2020, Westminster Council granted permission for the demolition of the old GCHQ Palmer Street building and the development of the site into a nine storey building. The old GCHQ building had been purchased for £16.8 million in March 2019 by Amdec Group, a property developer in South Africa with a London office. The proposed building (Basement, Lower Ground, Ground, six upper floors) will provide retail units at ground level, a gym at lower ground level, office accommodation on the six upper levels, plus a basement for changing facilities, cycle parking and bin storage.
GCHQ (right) 2-14, Palmer Street, London in 2008. Codenamed UKC1000 within the Echelon spy network
Google Street View
GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 Secret Rooms for BT Equipment
"Whoa! No way Huawei!": proposed equipment
cabinet next to MI5's remote data centre
In terms of so-called "Secret Rooms" within spy-related buildings, you need look no further than a public address database – but
not the usual Royal Mail one. If you use various telecommunications companies' broadband postcode checker tools to see if they supply your residential area with fast internet connections, certain addresses return very interesting and sometimes quite shockingly detailed results.
For example, MI5's headquarters at Thames House on Millbank near Parliament names
"Room 87" as being used for a
"BT Openreach Monitoring Line". A remote data centre used by MI5 in West London (known to journalists, but not publicly avowed) lists
"Floor 1, Room NR3" and
"Ground Floor, Hall 5, Cabinet D5, Room A05". Another non-publicly acknowledged MI5 facility near Manchester details
"Comms Suite G12 Rack 4".
Huawei BTS3900A Cabinet
Outdoor Macro Base Station
Meanwhile, GCHQ in Cheltenham names
"Ground Floor, Room 48",
"Ground Floor, Suite L1",
"Room B1E4, North Frame Room" and
"Basement Frame Room C1". Up at GCHQ Scarborough,
"Room 144" and
"Lower Ground Floor, Room 4B, Rack RZ10" are given special mentions.
Down at GCHQ Bude in Cornwall,
"Room 302" is named. But also listed is the latest expansion to GCHQ Bude:
Project Corn, a new office development and storage building under construction during 2018 next to the main gate. Not to be left out, MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Cross lists
"Floor 001, Room 110".
In an astonishing development in May 2020, a mobile telecommunications company made a planning application for the installation of a 20m high mast and a
Huawei BTS3900A macro base station cabinet directly opposite
MI5's remote data centre.
The 20m high monopole will have Mast Head Amplifiers (MHA) at the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz frequencies used in combination for 2G, 3G and 4G signals and two 300mm microwave dishes. The thought of Huawei equipment being in such close proximity to one of the UK's most sensitive sites is mind boggling. The local authority granted permission in July 2020.
It is not immediately clear whether it is an accidental encroachment by the mobile operators or a deliberate ploy by MI5 to tap into the networks at a high power cell site. The site is part of the upgrade to the Emergency Services Network (ESN) being rolled out nationally, which is a replacement for the Airwave system.
One option considered by the applicant – and I'm not joking here – was to mount the equipment on MI5's roof adjoining the data centre, thereby removing the need for the 20m mast. But this was ruled out because the roof is pitched rather than flat. Were MI5 even consulted or were they actually in collusion?
Technology news site The Register
reported on my "scoop".
I have agreed not to pinpoint the precise location on national security grounds. I have been aware of the £15m MI5 facility since it was first bought by the "Ministry of Defence" as an empty distribution warehouse in 2005. Back then, I warned the government that full internal planning drawings were available on the associated council's website.
Pouring the concrete for MI5's remote data centre somewhere in West London
Soon to be home to "Room NR3" and "Hall 5, Cabinet D5, Room A05"
Google Street View(just joshing!)
Whoa! No way, Huawei!
May 2020 planning application for a 20m mobile
telecoms mast with Huawei equipment cabinet
Directly opposite MI5's remote data centre
Whoa! No way, Huawei!
May 2020 planning application for a 20m mobile
telecoms mast with Huawei equipment cabinet
Directly opposite MI5's remote data centre
Proposed location of Huawei BTS3900A equipment cabinet
between lamp post and yellow grit box
Directly opposite MI5's remote data centre
Proposed location of Huawei BTS3900A equipment cabinet
between lamp post and yellow grit box
Directly opposite MI5's remote data centre
Huawei's Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) – "The Cell"
The controversial communications electronics company Huawei – alleged to have strong Chinese government connections – has its own
UK Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (CSEC) nicknamed "The Cell".
Comically, the supposed "covert" facility actually has a banner (draped like a "family-friendly pub" type advert) on the rear of the building proclaiming its precise purpose. You can take a look at Huawei's HCSEC at Endeavour House at Noral Way on the Banbury Office Village, Oxfordshire seen on the Google Street View further below. It is next to the new Amazon Distribution Centre, which was built on the cleared site of the historic Alcan / Sapa Profiles aluminium works.
Huawei took over Endeavour House from previous tenants Bibby Financial Services in 2017, after moving from their existing offices at Finance House on the Beaumont Road estate just a few hundred yards south along the A423. Also on the new Banbury Office Village site are rather less spooky, much more mundane, traditional operations like the UK arm of Sweden's Handelsbanken and BVAA – the British Valve and Actuator Association.
Huawei made a
planning application (ref:
17/01728) in August 2017 to Cherwell District Council for an upgrade to Endeavour House's cooling plant machinery and the provision of a dedicated electrical transformer in a green GRP (glass-reinforced plastic) enclosure.
The application (cleverly hidden behind previous residents Bibby's name) revealed that Endeavour House was to be "adapted to provide a new test facility for national internet infrastructure equipment". However, drilling down into the documents, the application was actually submitted by Huawei's Karen Cooper at the previous Finance House address, with agents
Kitson Architecture of Altrincham, Cheshire and hi-tech office and data centre fit-out specialists
Procol of Midsomer Norton, Radstock near Bath.
At the insistence of UK government, Huawei has embedded GCHQ / NCSC supervisory experts overseeing operations to allay fears that the Chinese telecommunications corporation has installed "backdoors" into its equipment. The IT news website
The Register had fun with my exclusive.
GCHQ's Cold War Operations Centre: Bahamas House, 10 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, London
Google Street View
GCHQ Palmer Street rear vehicle entrance (left) on Vandon Street and British Transport Police's emergency response vehicle garage (right)
Google Street View
British Transport Police's emergency response vehicle garage on Vandon Street
Google Street View
By 2018, BTP's garage on Vandon Street was the DPD Westminster parcel depot
Google Street View
GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) opposite Victoria Underground (right)
Floors 6 and 7, Nova South, 160 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5LB
Google Street View
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf
Rejected by GCHQ in favour of Nova South, Victoria
"The Cell" – Huawei's Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (CSEC) at Banbury, Oxfordshire
Google Street View
GCHQ heads south west but reveals too much
PermalinkIn October 2005, GCHQ went into collaboration with Bristol University to set up a research facility known as the
Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research (HIMR). The 1970s inventor of the Public Key Encryption RSA algorithm – GCHQ expert Clifford Cocks – was awarded an honorary degree at the Institute in February 2008.
The team of around 30 researchers spend half of their time on personal projects and the rest is spent on secondment to GCHQ's Doughnut in Cheltenham. The Institute Director is world famous mathematician Professor Elmer Rees, based in Bristol University's Maths Faculty in the
Royal Fort House Annexe. The hi-tech hardware in the Computer Science department's new
Merchant Venturers Building
obviously comes in handy.
In September 2018 it was announced that the Heilbronn Institute was to open another facility, HIMR North, at Manchester University in 2019 to collaborate with GCHQ's Manchester office.
The Deputy Director is a certain
Richard Pinch who describes himself coyly as "a civil servant from Gloucestershire" on
his personal website which he named Chalcedon, after the ancient maritime town in Asia Minor (now a district of Istanbul, Turkey) and also the Ecumenical Church Council held there in the year 451. However cryptic that is, his website reveals rather too much – considering he is a Senior Cryptographer at GCHQ. He details his countless Pure Maths
research papers, but gives his home address and telephone numbers too. However, he has at least ensured there's a gap in the Google Street View coverage of his road precisely where his large house is.
Full details on
his wife Geraldine – an author and Egyptologist at Oxford University's Faculty of Oriental Studies – are also available, along with a page devoted to their
beloved cats.
As if that wasn't enough, he
details his neighbours living along the same road in Cheltenham, just a short walk from the old GCHQ Oakley site (now demolished). It is a situation almost identical to the
Spymaster with his own public website – the Government's new Chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
RAF Boddington closed? Far from it
Permalink
Perhaps one of the most secretive signals analysis bases in the UK is known as
RAF Boddington, but it's no use you trawling Getmapping's aerial photos of the area looking for deserted runways – grassed over or otherwise. Until very recently, the RAF's No. 9 Signals Unit was tucked away in the tiny hamlet of Barrow near Boddington in Gloucestershire, in a field next door to a farm. At least the guys didn't have far to go for their milk and eggs in the morning.
As technology for the transfer of military messages moved on, the facility became redundant. The RAF signals personnel vacated the site in December 2007 and a formal ceremony was held in the village.
RAF Boddington's secure SIGINT enclave, just a few hundred yards to the east of Barrow's village centre, is only distinguishable from the village's cottages and the surrounding outbuildings of Barrow House Farm by consulting the
1:10000
OS maps, but there's still no label.
In March 2007, RAF Boddington was at last featured in high resolution on Google Earth but the data was actually from 2005. It revealed that the central hardened surface building has what look like portals to underground bunkers. It is known that RAF Boddington is connected by some sort of communications link to GCHQ, which is just a few miles to the south east, over on the other side of the M5 motorway. It is thought that the GCHQ Doughnut at Benhall, Cheltenham is furnished with military SIGINT traffic from Boddington.
In newer imagery from Getmapping dated July 2006, major refurbishment work on "Building 2" at Boddington was shown in progress. It included the addition of many new air conditioning units on the roof, presumably for upgraded computer systems. The project is confirmed by the planning application on the local council's website – which refers to the project name as "EDS Boddington". At the southern end of the site, a new temporary data server enclosure – with Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and standby generators – was in place while the main Building 2 works were in progress. Since the upgrade, the site has been known as ISS Boddington – Information Systems and Services.
In an article in 2006's issue number 32 of the
Defence Management Journal [PDF, 870KB], the MoD's Director General of Information described both the EDS Mitcheldean facility mentioned earlier and the EDS Boddington project as two key "Tier 1" data centres for the Defence Information Infrastructure [Future] (
DII[F] ) programme. It is being provided by the ATLAS consortium of companies, of which EDS is the prime contractor.
While the MoD was announcing the apparent demise of RAF Boddington, aerial imagery of the site was telling a very different story. So although the RAF signals staff of 9SU left in December 2007, it seems GCHQ (and many other Government agencies) will be using Boddington for many years to come.
Comparing imagery from 2006 (Getmapping, top) and 2005 (Google Earth, bottom) of RAF Boddington revealing major refurbishment of Building 2 (centre) and temporary EDS data server enclosure with UPS and standby generators (bottom)
Project EDS at RAF Boddington
Project ATLAS DII Server at RAF Boddington
© MoD
Bird's Eye view looking north across RAF Boddington showing the refurbished Building 2 with new heavy duty cooling plant machinery on the roof
Bing Bird's EyeHMGCC Hanslope Park – new imagery reveals £30M building
PermalinkBBC Radio 4 – MI6 Century in the Shadows: Secret Vault
Sometimes you can stumble upon interesting sites by accident.
Hanslope Park
in Buckinghamshire looks like one of those stately homes you would pass on a Sunday drive out with the kids. It is designated "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office" (FCO) and that's the sign on the gatehouse to Park House, the original mansion. However, a
further look
reveals rather more than your usual country pile.
Hanslope Park was originally acquired by the Foreign Office at a time when Britain's Secret Service was in its infancy and GCHQ-type work was done at nearby
Bletchley Park, in the days of Alan Turing. The 1:10000 scale map reveals the label "Wireless Station" and fields littered with countless aerial masts. However, these were dismantled in the 1990s to be replaced with state-of-the-art satellite communications (SATCOM) technology, leaving the sheep to graze in peace.
Hanslope has been massively expanded in more recent decades, under the title "His Majesty's Government Communications Centre" (HMGCC). It now houses laboratories and electronic circuit board design workshops plus annexes full of communications equipment and the latest supercomputers – and we're not talking "Intel Pentium".
It also provides the storage base for the Foreign Office's huge archive of historical records. In July / August 2009, Gordon Corera presented his BBC Radio 4 documentary series marking MI6's "Century in the Shadows". In the first episode – Gadgets and Green Ink – he visited a "cavernous vault" of SIS archives "somewhere just outside London", the precise location of which he had been requested not to reveal. Sounds familiar?
HMGCC employs hundreds of experts – the equivalents of gadget man "Q" in the James Bond films – but they are busy developing micro-electronics, software and communications technology, rather than exploding cigar holders and Aston Martins with ejector seats, machine gun attachments and revolving number plates. The facility is unique in that both electronic and mechanical disciplines and all phases of a project – from research and design, right through to manufacturing, final assembly and testing – are carried out on this one site.
The Foreign Office and HMGCC take up around 80% of the Hanslope Park estate. However, it is also home to MI6's Technical Security Department (TSD), staffed by SIS operatives who process and analyse data sent from GCHQ in Cheltenham and Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, especially data intercepted from the foreign embassies in London. During the Cold War era, this function was known as the Diplomatic Wireless Service.
Notice a brand new three storey office and computer block – reported to contain over 6500 square metres of floor space – under construction in the middle of the estate, on a former car park. The huge blue crane was a giveaway. This construction project, valued at £30 million, is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's new ICT Building – Information and Communications Technology. The IT staff, currently housed in various temporary accommodation at Hanslope, were due to move into the new ICT Building at the end of 2007, but it was delayed by several months.
In early January 2008, new Bird's Eye imagery of the area just south of Hanslope was made available that had been filmed in Summer 2007. By fluke, along the northern edge of the coverage boundary, the new ICT made a partial appearance (further below).
In 2005, the FCO signed a record-breaking £190 million, seven-year contract with Hewlett Packard (HP) to provide the hardware and software for the next generation of the FCO's secure global IT desktop infrastructure, code name: "Future Firecrest". The FCO's internal costs bring the total project value to more than £320 million – the largest contract ever signed by the UK Foreign Office. The system will be managed centrally from the new ICT Building at Hanslope Park, where hundreds more FCO staff from central London will be relocated at the end of the project in 2012.
In the far distance of the new Pilot's Eye aerial photo, you can make out Hanslope village itself and the church, St. James the Great, a Grade 1 listed building with the tallest spire in Buckinghamshire. Over in the far top right corner, the M1 motorway passes by.
In the grounds, you can clearly identify microwave dishes attached to a tall steel lattice tower, a green radome and a white satellite dish (also shown in the official website picture below). Also visible are tennis courts, a running track and a helicopter landing pad. However, you can also identify the double ring fenced security perimeter, covered on all angles by extensive floodlighting and CCTV cameras, complete with a very substantial rear vehicle access barrier. However, the green "radome" doesn't actually conceal satellite communications equipment, but a rolling road in which cars fitted with covert surveillance electronics are tested.
Some new Google Earth imagery was filmed in 2017 which revealed yet another brand new building. This is a vast manufacturing facility – the planning application for which was submitted in 2013. This enables HMGCC to provide for all stages of gadgetry manufacturing – from drawing board to circuit board – without having to sub-contract any aspect out to external companies. Not surprisingly, the internal drawings are not available on the local council website.
HMGCC Hanslope Park
© Crown Copyright
HMGCC Hanslope Park's covert surveillance and radio communications range. The green "radome" (left) is really a covered rolling road for testing vehicles (background) fitted with listening devices manufactured in the workshops (right)
Google Street View snoops around HMGCC Hanslope Park's rear entrance revealing the green cover on the vehicle rolling road test rig
Google Street ViewLooking east across HMGCC Hanslope Park in September 2008 showing the new ICT Building almost completed (centre) with main gate security upgrade construction work in progress (foreground, right)
HMGCC Hanslope Park in October 2009 showing the new ICT Building fully completed
HMGCC Hanslope Park in October 2009 showing the new main gate security upgrade completed
Playing safe: HMGCC Hanslope Park's south gate visitor entrance has been censored
Google Street View
HMGCC Hanslope Park's new manufacturing facility (top right) in 2017
Google Maps
MI6's Worst-Kept Secret
Permalink
plus ... "Spooky Embassy" (further below)
MI6's worst-kept secret can now finally be revealed – after the Secret Intelligence Service discreetly moved out of an undisclosed office building they have used for 25 years in addition to their official Vauxhall Cross HQ – and only a few hundred yards away.
It has been almost common knowledge that SIS were making use of
350 Kennington Lane
on the corner of Glyn Street, just a stone's throw from the official headquarters. In May 2006, it was even featured in a Time Out magazine list of London Espionage Locations, which mentioned the additional name "Beaufort Gardens" – found on planning applications. It is unclear where that name originated. Apart from "Beaufort" being the name of a wind speed measurement scale, it was a cipher used by the US Navy in the WWII M-209 cryptography machine.
Perhaps the biggest leak of the building's use was when the Save the Children charity were interested in building new offices right next door on Glyn Street. In June 2002, the planning application was "called-in" by the Secretary of State, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and blocked on grounds of "national security".
In a classic example of the Streisand Effect, Government press officers were confused that they had not even heard of the mysterious Government Communications Bureau (GCB) who had objected to the Save the Children proposals. Journalists had
great fun stirring things up, knowing full well that GCB was a front name for MI6 / SIS when wanting to send out invoices and purchase notes.
350 Kennington Lane
Circlelock entrances
The functions carried out within 350KL, as I have grown accustomed to calling it, were rather mundane and not at all "shaken martinis and casinos", although the building was fitted with special pod security entrance doors (orthotubes like Circlelock and Tourlock) just like on BBC's Spooks – and indeed MI5's HQ at Thames House on Millbank. It has an underground car park and traffic light-controlled security gate around the back on Auckland Street. But most new refurbishments of London office blocks have these security measures as standard nowadays.
350KL is opposite the Met Police's Cobalt Square offices on South Lambeth Road. In 2000, neighbouring Spring Gardens (now dubiously renamed Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, given its proximity to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern) was the location used by the Real IRA (RIRA) Irish Republican terrorist organisation to fire a shoulder-launched RPG-22 missile at SIS HQ at Vauxhall Cross. It only slightly damaged one of the specially reinforced windows, although the intended target was sensitive satellite equipment up on the roof.
One morning in November 2007, the SIS folk inside 350 Kennington Lane had a bit of a scare when a number 185 bus from Lewisham to Victoria Station careered off the road in rush hour traffic and almost hit the building, coming to a rest down the side of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern instead.
For several years, it has been labelled on Bing Maps as "MI6 Support Building", without causing any apparent anxiety in the corridors of Whitehall. Staff at political book specialist Biteback Publishing's offices across the road at 375 Kennington Lane regularly observed comings and goings, until they moved to Westminster Tower on Albert Embankment directly opposite MI5's Thames House in 2010.
350KL merely provided administrative services: invoicing, equipment purchasing and such like. Staff based in the offices were officially working for
GCB and
GCPD (Government Communications Planning / Procurement Directorate / Department, take your pick).
Holy Spies! Batman fans thought GCPD stood for Gotham City Police Department! It is easy to find numerous mentions of these GCB and GCPD cover names in LinkedIn CVs and official Government email accounts
gcpd.gsi.gov.uk and
gcb.gsi.gov.uk.
In late 2017, the CCTV camera fixings all around the building were removed and the dead-giveaway Government-issue net curtains came down. The security pod entrances were permanently shuttered, never again to beep and switch between red and green lights on being swiped with biometric cards. Ever since, there have been signs in ground floor windows warning passers-by of a resident security company guarding the empty building.
MI6's South African connection
It was presumed that 350KL would be commercially marketed by original owners
Szerelmey International (across the road at 369 Kennington Lane) and who specialise in ornate stonework refurbishments. Szerelmey is headed by octogenarian South African (with Irish nationality)
Gordon Verhoef. In his home country, Gordon Verhoef and Krause (Pty) Limited has been responsible for
restoring most of South Africa's buildings since 1960. Gordon formed the business in Cape Town with best friend Earl Krause and started out as just painters and decorators.
At 350KL, between 1989 and 1991 Szerelmey developed the cleared site of a 1920s picture house (cinema) – and later, a 1960s / 1970s printing works – and occupied the new building themselves, initially known as Druce House named after one of their associated companies.
From 1992 it was let out by Szerelmey (acting through the parent company,
Tusk Holdings). It was used as a "training centre" by the new tenants, an anonymous Government department based in Room 8/44, St. Christopher House in Southwark Street – very well-known former Government administration offices, long since demolished.
Sure enough, a
planning application, ref. 19/01197/FUL was submitted to Lambeth Council in April 2019 by
Aviva Life and Pensions UK Limited to upgrade the whole building, with the underground garages to be converted into additional office space plus cycle stores and staff showers. Aviva had already obtained a Certificate of Lawful Development in May 2018, legally proving that "B1 Business" use of the building as offices was well-established. The triptych of Spooks-style Circlelock entrances were to be completely removed and replaced with a glazed reception frontage and canopy.
In Google Street View imagery dated March 2019, all the building's windows are covered in blinds with the logo of Aviva's construction contractors Woodvalley Builders of Barnet, Hertfordshire and the rear underground garage entrance view shows site work commencing.
By Summer 2020, the transformation of MI6's 350 Kennington Lane was complete and it was unveiled as "The Hudson" – a trendy workspace with
glossy brochure. The original Circlelock entrances were given a reprieve after all, but without the actual MI6 security pods.
Within days of the original publication of this story, Lambeth Council deleted all documents and drawings accompanying the application. The Aviva planning agent told me that Lambeth Council had been made aware of "the previous sensitive use of the building". How silly. The agent then instructed Lambeth's planning department to reinstate them.
Ironically, in 2008, six years after the original Save the Children planning application debacle, huge blocks of 69 residential apartments – Dexter House and Muscovy House – were built next door. Bizarrely, the apartment blocks are named after breeds of cattle and ducks at nearby Vauxhall City Farm. But those secret squirrels are gone. I hear they've gone up-market.
Republic of Indonesia's Spooky Embassy
Foreign Diplomats haunted by MI5
No, not a story about haunted buildings and poltergeists. In 2016, the Republic of Indonesia acquired
Trevelyan House at 30 Great Peter Street in Westminster (pictured further below) for £40 million. It is just around the corner from the UK Home Office at Marsham Street. They had been turfed out of their place near the old American Embassy in Grosvenor Square which is under massive redevelopment.
The Indonesian government got vacant possession of Trevelyan House as the previous residents had all moved out. What the newly installed diplomats probably didn't realise is that Trevelyan House's security was already substantially upgraded by the UK government many years earlier in 2007. The reception was hardened under
"Project Regard" and MI5 / MI6-style entry pods (
"Tubelocks" on the plans) were added together with reinforced blast windows for the visitor baggage search room.
On moving in, the diplomats proudly placed an Indonesian Eagle crest above the Trevelyan House sign. In 2017 they finally got around to covering-up the old Trevelyan House sign with one declaring "Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia". Eventually in 2019 they added smart black gates to the front perimeter, after the initial planning application for them in 2018 was refused by Westminster City Council.
If you look through historical planning documents you realise that Trevelyan House had been home to several covert teams connected to the Security Service and to the Met Police's Counter Terrorism Command, using the cover of "Ministry of Defence". You could say that Indonesia's diplomats are now haunted by past spooks. A few mundane guests like the Office for Government Commerce (OGC), the Electoral Commission and the Boundary Committee called it home too, but on separate floors obviously.
The OGC was formed from the merger of Property Advisers to the Civil Estate (PACE), The Buying Agency (TBA) and the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), all formerly at Trevelyan House.
Out and proud: "MI6 Support Building", 350 Kennington Lane
Bing Maps
SIS / MI6 former offices 1992 – 2017 (right) at Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, London, SE11 5HY
Rear view with Muscovy House / Dexter House apartments (left) and underground garages (right)
Google Maps
SIS / MI6 Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane
Underground garages and those giveaway Government-issue net curtains
Google Street View
SIS / MI6 Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane
Security pod Circlelock entrances and CCTV camera fixings in July 2017
Google Street View
Circlelock entry doors are found in many offices all over central London
Former covert MI6 offices at One Bessborough Gardens, Pimlico (vacated 2022)
Google Street View
Former covert MI6 offices at One Bessborough Gardens, Pimlico (vacated 2022)
Google Street View
Former covert MI6 offices at One Bessborough Gardens, Pimlico (vacated 2022)
Security cameras removed in late 2022
Google Street View
Security entry pods at MI5's Thames House HQ
SIS / MI6 / GCB / GCPD offices (left), Muscovy House and Dexter House (right)
under construction on Glyn Street during 2009
Google Street View
SIS / MI6 HQ Vauxhall Cross, 85 Albert Embankment (top left)
SIS / MI6 / GCB / GCPD Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane (bottom right)
Google Maps
SIS / MI6 Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane
Entrance shuttered and CCTV camera fixings all gone in February 2018
Google Street View
SIS / MI6 Beaufort Gardens, 350 Kennington Lane
Aviva's site contractors Woodvalley Builders commence work in March 2019
Google Street View
Spooky building: Indonesian Embassy, Trevelyan House, 30 Great Peter Street
Formerly covert home to teams from MI5 and Met Police Counter Terrorism Command
Google Street View
MI6
PermalinkSpecial Operations Executive (SOE), Numbers Stations, Fort Monckton and IONEC
MI6 operatives are sent to the seaside for their induction training. Take a look at the SIS Training Centre at
Fort Monckton
at Gosport, Hampshire, near the Portsmouth Naval Base. It is where MI6's IONEC (Intelligence Officers' New Entry Course) is conducted.
MI6 has used various sites for the transmission, interception and analysis of signals intelligence (SIGINT) over the decades since WWII, some of which were still in operation in the late 1990s. Consider
Poundon
(south west of the county town of Buckingham but on the border with Oxfordshire near Bicester),
Creslow
(north east of Whitchurch, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire) and
Gawcott
(just south of Buckingham). The Gawcott and Creslow sites are said to have been used as Numbers Stations allowing MI6 agents around the world to keep in touch with HQ at home.
The Creslow site was only removed from OS 1:50000 maps in 2003, but the 1:25000 map continued to show a massive "aerial mast farm" for many years until it was finally erased by OS in early 2006. The Getmapping aerial photo from 1999 reveals a high security SIGINT enclave right next to Creslow's Manor House. The Creslow MI6 station was completely refurbished by the Government between 1993 and 1997, only to be abandoned in 1998 in obvious excellent condition. It has since been acquired by the neighbouring farm with a view to selling on to interested buyers. It has most recently been used as a filming location by a top TV production company.
The Poundon site is now occupied by the Tower Hill Business Park, housing several companies in industrial units. Similarly, the old SIGINT site at Gawcott is now subtly referred to as Signal Hill and provides a home to a few industrial workshop units and the Woodlands Education Trust Tutorial Centre – an independent school. Note that on Google Earth, the more recent high resolution aerial photography of Gawcott reveals another new access road to the industrial units within what used to be MI6's main secure enclave.
During WWII, MI6's Section VIII (Communications) was based at Whaddon Hall, an outpost of Bletchley Park (Station-X). The various MI6 Section VIII radio facilities – used to communicate with field agents in the WWII Bletchley Park and Special Operations Executive (SOE) era – were dotted around Buckinghamshire at Manor Farm, Calverton (next to the village's All Saints Church and almshouses); Nash; Upper Weald Farm (now known as Weald Leys Farm); Charndon; Twyford; Grendon House at Grendon Underwood (where HMP Grendon and HMP Spring Hill prisons are now); Tattenhoe Bare Farm; and "Windy Ridge" (the nickname given by radio operators to Church Hill behind St Mary's Church at Whaddon).
Amazingly, the concrete plinths for the transmitter and generator huts can still be seen in the field just south west of St Mary's on Google Earth. At Manor Farm, Calverton, the remains of a brick hut forming the wireless station's generator building can be found in the field east of the almshouses. Even more impressive, the remote-controlled transmitter and generator buildings for MI6's Poundon facility are still standing over 70 years later (but on private land) at Grange Farm, Godington just over the county border in Oxfordshire.
The fields surrounding Poundon and Godington stations were filled with rhombic antenna and dipole antenna installations – all long gone. Charndon's MI6 huts can still be found within what is now a vehicle scrap yard on School Hill, the road leading east out of the village, south of Grebe Lake. Further east along School Hill in the next field you can see the old transmitter building. At Portway Farm, Twford, more 1940s equipment blocks can be seen, which most folk will assume are farm buildings.
The Grendon Underwood receiver and Charndon transmitter were together designated Station 53a of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), communicating with South Western Europe agents. SOE's Station 53b comprised a receiver at Poundon and transmitter at Godington and dealt with Central Europe. Personnel accommodation was provided in huts within the grounds of Poundon House. Station 53c was formed of a receiver at Poundon and transmitter at Twford, covering the Scandanavian countries. You can spot all these WWII Bletchley Park related MI6 / SOE wireless stations on my handy
Google Earth explorer.
© Ordnance Survey
© Getmapping plc
The aerial photo of the Gawcott site (below left) shows very faint scarring left behind on the ground in the shape of a cross – 'X'. It is just to the south west of the current buildings and to the west of the access road and it is where another SIGINT enclave used to be.
On the old 1:25000 scale OS map, this was only finally removed at the start of 2006. An identical SIGINT enclave in this cross formation can still be found at the south end of RAF Croughton which is discussed in detail further on.
Former MI6/FCO high security SIGINT enclaves at (left to right) Gawcott, Poundon and Creslow
WWII-era MI6 transmitter generator block (right) at Manor Farm / All Saints Church, Calverton, Buckinghamshire
Bing Bird's Eye
WWII-era MI6 transmitter and generator blocks at Grange Farm, Godington, Bicester, Oxfordshire
Google Maps
WWII-era MI6 transmitter block at School Hill, Charndon, Bicester, Oxfordshire
Google Street View
Special Operations Executive SOE wireless station at School Hill, Charndon, Bicester, Oxfordshire: comparison of 1945 and 2018 aerial photography shows generator and transmitter blocks (left) and original transmitter block (right)
Google Maps
Special Operations Executive SOE black propaganda radio station at Potsgrove near Woburn Abbey: "Pansy" transmitter (lower left) and "Poppy" transmitter (upper right) in 1945 and 2018 aerial photographs
Google Maps
Special Operations Executive SOE black propaganda radio station at Potsgrove near Woburn Abbey
"Pansy" transmitter block (left) and generator block (right)
Google Street View
Special Operations Executive (SOE) Camouflage Section – "Prop Shop". The Thatched Barn roadhouse at Rowley Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire: 1945 image (left) shows explosives magazines area and workshops; 2018 image (right) shows the Holiday Inn London Elstree hotel
Google Earth
Special Operations Executive SOE Station XII – production, packing and shipping facility at Aston House, Stevenage, Hertfordshire. 1940s Ordnance Survey map showing explosives magazines, workshops, living quarters. Now replaced by 1970s / 1980s housing and Stevenage Golf & Conference Centre
Copyright © Ordnance Survey / Landmark Information Group
www.old-maps.co.uk
Political Warfare Executive PWE Black Propaganda Radio Studio at Church End, Milton Bryant (latterly Milton Bryan), Bedfordshire. Currently home to Ampthill & Woburn District Scouts Group
Bing Bird's Eye
SOE's Whaddon Paraset clandestine radio set production factory at Royal Signals Special Communications Unit (SCU) Shucklow Hill, Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire. Now known as Shucklow Business Park
Google Maps
Bletchley Park's Enigma / Hollerith tabulating machine outstation at Prospect Farm, Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire. By the 1950s / 1960s transformed into a General Post Office (GPO) Training Centre, since 1980s a housing estate
Google Maps
Prospect Farm, Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire
Bletchley Park's outstation (1940s OS map, left) transforms into GPO Training Centre (1970s OS map, right)
www.old-maps.co.uk
A Hexacopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Camera Drone flies over the former MI6 radio station at Poundon
A Hexacopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Camera Drone flies over the former MI6 radio station at Creslow
Former MI6/FCO transmitter compound at Creslow Manor as seen in 2011
Creslow's main transmitter control room under construction in the 1990s
View from the top of Creslow's transmitter cable gantry in 2011
Remains of Creslow's transmitter cable gantry in 2011
Creslow in the late 1960s / early 1970s
Creslow in the late 1960s / early 1970s
Creslow in the late 1960s / early 1970s
Loughside – new Northern Ireland MI5 Headquarters revealed
Permalink
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) / MI6 Headquarters at
Vauxhall Cross, on Albert Embankment in London, is now very well known due to being featured as a backdrop to a River Thames chase sequence in the James Bond film "The World Is Not Enough". The Royal Mail address database reveals that MI6 HQ is listed discreetly as "Government Communications Bureau, 85 Albert Embankment".
Meanwhile, back in London on the other bank of the River Thames, you'll find MI5's HQ at
Thames House
on Millbank. If you're a fan of the
BBC's MI5 drama "Spooks", you will have perhaps realised that, due to tight filming schedule restrictions, Thames House is actually played by the HQ of the United Grand Lodge of England,
Freemasons Hall.
It is a Grade II listed building in Great Queen Street, near Covent Garden. The Hall was also seen in the BBC series "Nuclear Secrets" in 2007, which detailed the history of the race between US and Soviet superpowers to develop atomic weapons and the battle against spies intent on trading the top secret technology. It was used to represent a KGB interrogation centre.
During 2006, it was widely reported that MI5 was building a brand new £20 million HQ in Belfast to prepare for its new role, officially taking over counter-terrorism from the Police Service of Northern Ireland's (PSNI) Special Branch at the end of 2007. It has since been confirmed that the new HQ (pictured below right, during its early construction phase in a
BBC News story) has a much wider additional function, providing an emergency backup for the main HQ in Thames House, London.
MI5 HQ Palace Barracks
Holywood, Belfast
© BBC News
The new MI5 HQ – four storeys plus underground facilities – has been built within
Palace Barracks in Holywood, just north east of George Best Belfast City Airport.
On Google Earth's
updated imagery released in November 2007, the construction project is shown well under way and the new MI5 building (known as Loughside) can be clearly seen. It is revealed in even greater detail on updated Bird's Eye views from Windows Live Local.
If you want to know all about other "secret" MI5 locations (like where MI5 gets its cars serviced!), make sure you check out my Eye Spy Magazine UK Secrets article
"Watching the Watchers" from Summer 2005 – regularly updated.
Loughside – MI5's new HQ in Northern Ireland on Google Street View in the distance, taken from George Best Belfast City Airport
Google Street View
MI5's "Spot the Difference" competition. Comparing versions of Google Earth imagery to reveal new Loughside, Palace Barracks, Northern Ireland HQ (bottom)
Bird's Eye view of Palace Barracks, Holywood, Belfast, Northern Ireland looking east from the main road, showing Loughside – MI5's new HQ (top centre) under construction
Bing Bird's EyeBird's Eye view of Loughside, Palace Barracks, MI5's new HQ under construction – looking east
Bing Bird's Eye
Bird's Eye view of MI5 Loughside, Palace Barracks. New high quality imagery filmed in 2013
Bing Bird's Eye
MI5 Loughside's plant machinery and back-up diesel generator
Bing Bird's Eye
The former Military Reaction Force / Mobile Reaction Force (MRF) compound within Palace Barracks
Bing Bird's Eye
Razed but not erased – the former MRF compound is now a car park
Bing Bird's Eye
MRF (left) to MI5 (right) at Palace Barracks
Bemused MI5 Thames House guards look on as Google Street View snoops around the rear vehicle entrance on Thorney Street
Google Street View
Even MI5 officers leaving by the back door can't avoid the Google Street View Car
Google Street View
Thames House maintenance work doesn't stop staff leaving by the back door
Google Street View
Spies at the bottom of the garden. Metropolitan Police Denmark Hill Wireless Station. A former wartime Y Station and joint MI5/MI6/GCHQ bugging technical laboratory
Bing Bird's Eye
Spooky Neighbours. Security Gate to Metropolitan Police Denmark Hill Wireless Station, 113 Grove Park, Camberwell, London, SE5
Bing Streetside
Spooky Neighbours. Metropolitan Police Denmark Hill Wireless Station (top right)
Google Maps 3D
Former MI5 Computer Centre, 26-28 Mount Row, Mayfair, London, W1 (Became a car showroom for JD Classics in 2015)
Google Street View
Freemasons Hall – Great Queen Street, Covent Garden. BBC TV Drama "Spooks" filming location for MI5 Thames House HQ
Google Street View
MI5's Bureau West Data Centre and Project Grid 77
Permalink
Hot Fuzz? Yarp!
MI5's Bureau West
Data Centre in
Devizes, Wiltshire
The Security Service MI5 only has two main facilities that have been publicly avowed: the HQ at Thames House on Millbank in London and the emergency backup at Loughside within Palace Barracks in Holywood, Belfast. Additionally, journalists are aware of a West London remote data centre and the Northern Operations Centre (NOC) near Manchester, both of which have been in operation since 2008 but have so far still not been fully acknowledged.
A well-placed informant told me that when the MI5 NOC first opened for business, the local criminals were already prowling around it every night sniffing after the tasty vehicles parked within its extremely high security confines. They foolishly assumed it was a high-end commercial car distribution depot and therefore rich pickings. Awkward! There are obviously numerous
Watchers Garages where vehicles are maintained for the teams of surveillance officers.
Also, there are a few joint National Crime Agency / Border Force / HMRC / MI5 Technical Support Units (TSU). There's a major one down in Kent on a well-known business park in one of the Medway towns, for example. But that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as the A2, M2 and M20 are key routes into and out of the UK. The Kent facility is vast – spread over two adjacent warehouses – and is used to store and equip surveillance vehicles with "special kit" for covert operations like immigration, serious organised crime, drugs trafficking, human trafficking and VAT fraud raids.
But all those are the present day and are so sensitive that I have agreed not to pinpoint them. Having said that, during 2020 the controversial Chinese technology company Huawei decided to install a telecoms base station and 20m high mast right outside MI5's remote data centre near London – a comical story
that I broke without actually giving too much away.
But MI5 have always been up to their tricks in one way or another and a classic example can be examined by going back to the early 1970s. Consider the Wiltshire market town of Devizes and perhaps your mind wanders to thoughts of Wadworth's Brewery. The Wiltshire police headquarters is there and several huge military barracks were once spread out across the parish.
Take the A361 north east out of Devizes and head towards Avebury. Well before the ancient stone circles and longbarrows you will pass Hopton Industrial Estate, which was previously Hopton Barracks. Just to the south and east was Le Marchant Barracks, where there is now housing. But back in the early 1970s, the "Ministry of Defence" built a vast data processing centre on the far north eastern corner of Le Marchant Barracks on Horton Road, where it adjoined the Wiltshire County Council road maintenance depot (which is still there).
MI5's Bureau West (BuWest) Data Centre
Constructed at the north east corner of Le Marchant Barracks, Devizes, Wiltshire
1961 1:10560 scale Ordnance Survey mapping © www.old-maps.co.uk
MI5's Bureau West (BuWest) Data Centre at Le Marchant Barracks, Devizes, Wiltshire
1983 1:10000 scale Ordnance Survey mapping © www.old-maps.co.uk
MI5's Bureau West (BuWest) Data Centre at Le Marchant Barracks, Devizes, Wiltshire
1976 1:2500 scale Ordnance Survey mapping © www.old-maps.co.uk
The highly secretive MoD buildings known as
Bureau West (or BuWest) were originally constructed for admin projects like the Royal Navy's Ship Upkeep Information System (SUIS) held at the Naval Maintenance Data Centre (NMDC) at St George Barracks in Gosport, Hampshire. But the purpose soon morphed into a top secret project named
Grid 77 – because it was due to launch in the year 1977.
The "Grid" in the name was a reference to the intention of MI5 to connect together all the key Government computer databases (those of Inland Revenue [now HMRC], Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), Department of Employment, NHS, etc.) so that they could be searched using everyone's National Insurance (NI) number. State-of-the-art (for the 70s) ICL 2980 mainframes were commissioned for a "Big Brother" system several years before the Orwellian year 1984 actually dawned.
Unfortunately – and you knew this bit was coming, didn't you? – the ICL mainframes weren't up to the job, the Government IT procurement processes went belly-up as usual, and after the shock of 1977's Sex Pistols we'd all moved on to the rather more fragrant Debbie Harry in 1978. The big plan was to have
four Bureau West style data facilities across the country all feeding into MI5's central systems. Presumably these nodes would have connected into
MI5's Computer Centre on Mount Row in Mayfair (featured above in the previous section). But Devizes was the only one that was actually constructed. The spluttering ICL computer systems destined for Bureau West's secret MI5 project were never brought "online".
The Parliament Hansard entry for March 1984 reported an exchange in the House of Commons between Labour MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, Michael Meacher and Conservative MP Leon Brittan (Home Secretary, speaking for the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine):–
- Michael Meacher — To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) for what purpose the MoD-ICL 2980 computer installation located in Mayfair has been connected to a nationwide network of computer terminals and minicomputers; (2) if he will provide to the House the same technical details of the MoD-ICL 2980 computer installation located in Mayfair as the employment agency EDP Systems Ltd. has been authorised to reveal to non-security-checked applicants, and further describe to the House the purposes, cost and data stored on this computer so far as the information is not classified.
- Leon Brittan — I have been asked to reply. I assume that the Hon. Member is referring to the matters discussed in a recent article which speculates about the use of computers for national security purposes and the recruitment of staff to operate such computers. It has been the practice of successive Governments not to comment on such matters.
By looking at historical Google Earth imagery, you can't miss the MI5 Bureau West operations centre just to the west of the Wiltshire Council depot on Horton Road and just a few hundred yards from the Kennet and Avon Canal. It was replaced by the houses on Corn Croft Lane, Leigh Woods Lane, Rowan Drive and Brook Gardens which were built in several phases, completing in 2015.
By 1984 Bureau West had transformed into the MoD Directorate of Central Computer Services. Incidentally, the matching
Bureau London consisted of offices and computer rooms in both the Old War Office and Metropole Building in Whitehall near MoD Main Building. By 1993, the MoD Bureau West data centre operations had been privatised and the contract went to NHS facilities management company Hoskyns (later to morph into CapGemini).
A consortium involving ICL and Hoskyns was taken to court in 1994 by the Department of Social Security because of the failed Analytical Services Statistical Information System (known as
ASSIST). Perhaps it should have been called
CEASE AND DESIST.
In 2020, the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine volume 113 featured a
special article on Bureau West including individual building identifications and site photos taken just before it was cleared for the housing development.
A modern-day major CapGemini data centre called Toltec can be found in Bristol alongside the M5 at Aztec West Business Park, Almondsbury. "Toltec" was the name of the pre-Aztec civilisation. Given Capgemini's connection to the old MoD / MI5 Bureau West site, it is highly likely that several key government systems have been through this facility. It is surely significant that the Metropolitan Police approved Toltec (and Capgemini's Merlin data centre in Swindon) for use in counter-terrorism operations using
E-LINE by DIRAK mechatronic rack access security measures.
In October 2020, a major planning application was approved to demolish the 1990s Toltec buildings and replace them with three new Grade A office buildings. So CapGemini are on the move again.
MI5's Bureau West (BuWest) Data Centre, Devizes, Wiltshire in 2006
Wiltshire County Council's depot for gritter lorries is top right
Google Earth
MI5's Bureau West (BuWest) Data Centre, Devizes, Wiltshire replaced with housing in 2018
Google Earth
Bureau West entrance sign still in place with the first phase of replacement modern housing in the background
Google Street View
Capgemini's modern-day Toltec Data Centre next to the M5
Aztec West Business Park, Almondsbury, Bristol
See on Google Maps 3D
NBTC – National Border Targeting Centre, UK Borders Agency
PermalinkPR blunder gives vital clues to new location in Manchester
In early 2009, the newspapers were full of indignation concerning a planned project called e-Borders (also known as Joint Borders) run by the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) to track passengers entering and leaving UK airports (but also other transport hubs). Under a crucial test phase codenamed Project Semaphore, an anonymous looking office block near Heathrow Airport was staffed by profilers known as
Match Analysts [PDF, 56KB], scanning passenger lists and itineraries checking against MI5 watchlists. As I revealed in
exclusive forensic research for Jason Lewis of the Mail on Sunday in March 2009, the secret location was
Status Park 4
on Nobel Drive just off the main A4 Bath Road north of Heathrow Airport.
After a successful pilot programme (run by the Trusted Borders consortium led by Raytheon Systems), the Joint Borders Operations Centre (JBOC) at Status Park, Heathrow was renamed the e-Borders Operations Centre (EBOC or E-BOC) and then finally the National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC). During 2009, the physical location was changed to "somewhere in the north west" but the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith mentioned Manchester in a speech and the Wythenshawe area around Manchester Airport was also later cited in newspaper articles.
In December 2009, as I revealed in yet another of my regular
research collaborations with the MoS, I discovered a restricted, commercially sensitive
Joint Borders project document [PDF, 500KB] written by prime contractor US defence corporation Raytheon Systems whose then HQ in Uxbridge, Middlesex was known as the
Joint Borders Integration Facility. It had been posted on the European Regions Airlines Association (ERA) website as a FAQ for airline carriers in a supposedly "members only" password protected area. But it was publicly accessible by just doing a simple Google Search.
Comically, among all the technical information, the
secret document [PDF, 500KB] implied that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and indeed the whole Royal Family, plus other VIPs, would no longer be exempt from carrying valid documentation and would be subjected to the Joint Borders data requirements on travel just like every one of her subjects.
Still on the subject of "Wythenshawe" and the hunt for the NBTC location, I noticed that Accenture, one of the major contractors assisting Raytheon, responsible for end-user technical training, are operating out of
Kingsley Hall
on Bailey Lane adjacent to the Airport, on the edge of Wythenshawe. Having said that, the Borders Agency has a presence on the 5th Floor of the
4M Building
on Malaga Avenue within the airport itself, a new development above the new train and bus station. Although it masquerades on address databases as "IND" — its previous name, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Could this be the NBTC location?
Well, the Trusted Borders website itself gave the game away in March 2010 when it featured a publicity photo in its "media kit" showing the interior design of the NBTC office block. I then worked my "magic" and pinpointed it to
Maple House
(previously known as Ambassador House – when ICL / Fujitsu Services were resident) in the middle of the refurbished Concord Business Park on Threapwood Road in Wythenshawe, just a mile from Manchester International Airport's main terminals and right next door to Virgin Media's call centre. All the five office units on Concord Business Park were originally given aircraft themed names – Ambassador House, Brabazon House, Caravelle Court, Dakota House and Eagle Court. The refurbished estate has dropped the theme and now uses, respectively, Maple House, Willow Court, Sycamore House, Pine Court and Rowan Court.
In a shock development in July 2010, the new UK Government terminated their contract with Raytheon due to continually missed deadlines and poor quality of service.
e-Borders NBTC – National Border Targeting Centre, Maple House, Concord Business Park, Wythenshawe, Manchester
Photo: www.gvagrimley.co.uke-Borders NBTC – National Border Targeting Centre, Maple House, Concord Business Park, Wythenshawe, Manchester
Photo: www.gvagrimley.co.ukJoint Borders Integration Facility, Raytheon former HQ within Harman House, Uxbridge, Middlesex
Google Street View4M Building, Malaga Avenue, Manchester Airport. UKBA is on the 5th Floor, Concorde Offices
Bing Bird's EyeSecret Raytheon Trusted Borders document reveals new checks for Royals
DocumentSpooks Spooked – Hacking attempt on MI5's official website
PermalinkThe original research behind the amazing story
In October 2007 I had typed the web addresses of the main UK Government agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ into web analysis tools. All revealed – as fully expected – that the websites had been constructed by the technical wizards at the MoD's research wing QinetiQ (of which more throughout these pages).
However, the entry for MI5 revealed that the official website of the Security Service had been apparently "hacked" and that MI5's IP (Internet Protocol) address [194.61.183.97] was shared by a rogue website address composed of two offensive words, usually "bleeped" out of TV shows.
I discovered that the domain name had been registered and hosted by an Internet enthusiast who, one can only assume, wished to illustrate a vulnerability of the Internet itself. Typing the rogue web address into a browser would cause the MI5 website to display. Just days after I exposed this, the domain owner made a quick adjustment so that the website could only be accessed with a username and password.
He is also the registered owner of the following domain names:- www.titaniumz.net, www.titaniumz.org, (but no longer .com), www.internexusconnect.net (plus .com, .org, .info and .biz) and www.dnb.me.uk. Disturbingly, www.dnb.com and www.dnb.co.uk are both owned by the world famous Dun and Bradstreet business consultancy organisation. Could they have been next on the agenda?
As soon as I passed my original research onto a senior London journalist at a major daily, things got even more sinister. Just as the story was about to go to press in the early hours of Tuesday 22nd October 2007, the hacker launched an attack on the newspaper's corporate website causing major headaches for the senior systems engineers.
My journalist contact had already discussed my research evidence with experts at Computer Weekly and they decided to run a small story on the Tuesday anyway. However, it didn't present my detailed evidence and the industry commentators were therefore not given the chance to give fuller and more relevant responses. On Wednesday the 23rd, the hacker then turned his attentions on the Computer Weekly website. In 2008, the hacker used another domain www.f***ing-muppet.info to spoof the MI5 website.
During 2009, MI5 took action and moved their website to another IP address nearby, [194.61.183.111] plus another representing the alternate official name www.securityservice.gov.uk [194.61.183.112]. In 2016, MI5 moved their website onto the CloudFlare platform at [198.41.186.37]. GCHQ moved theirs onto the Amazon CloudFront at [54.230.11.252] but MI6 left theirs at [194.61.183.121].
Take a look at the detailed evidence below, starting with the domain data for MI5's website, then the MI5 IP address itself, followed by the rogue website and finally look at the whole IP block in which the MI5 website sits. Then consider the data for the other agencies – MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service, SIS) and GCHQ, which have (so far) been unaffected.
In November 2007, I spotted another suspected similar attempt on hacking the American National Security Agency (NSA) by the owner of the domain www.latiff.biz. I used the web tools again to reveal the owner as a prolific Internet entrepreneur behind the money-spinning operation www.ultimatesecretsofsuccess.com.
Of course, strictly speaking, the evidence doesn't actually illustrate the antics of true "hackers" – in the normal sense of gaining unauthorised remote access to a computer network. Rather, it exhibits the phenomenon of "spoofing". It shows that anyone with an Internet server at home can create a website which points to any other server on the Web. This in itself should be cause for concern for anyone running their own websites. It was certainly alarming enough for one newspaper group to resort to issuing formal threats from their lawyers.
MI5 hacker turns on Computer Weekly
Official MI5 website
Rogue hacker website
MI5 and Computer Weekly website attacks
Hacker network
NSA hacker
MI5 Offices in Birmingham
Jewel in the Crown
Permalink
If you fancied having a look around the inside of an MI5 facility you could always book an appointment with the local estate agents. Strange, but in this case true.
The
former Security Service branch offices in
Viceroy House
were close to Birmingham's ancient Jewellery Quarter (the JQ) at the corner of Water Street and Livery Street, alongside Snow Hill Station. The four storey building, 65 Water Street – empty for three years after MI5 left in 2008/9 – has been transformed into exclusive loft apartments.
Not quite a Jewel in the Crown, Viceroy House is in a very old industrial centre which once bristled with workers toiling away at lathes. Water Street was formerly home to the Derwent Foundry. Viceroy House itself was an engraving works in the 1970s.
Viceroy House is in the shadow of Birmingham's own BT Tower, on the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal towpath at Farmer's Bridge Locks, opposite the Tunnel Club nightclub (in MI5's time, known as Subway City) inside a railway arch. It is also just around the corner from West Midlands Police's (WMP) HQ at Colmore Circus.
The MI5 main door with "65" above was actually on Livery Street directly opposite the nightclub entrance. A single CCTV camera at this entrance was apparently the only overt security. Ground floor internal garages with blue doors were on the Water Street side, adjacent to the old Taylor and Challen engineering works.
Looking at the oldest Google Street View imagery from 2008, you can spot the tell-tale Government–issue curtains in the windows. In the same 2008 imagery, in an upper floor window you can catch a glimpse of what looks like a sign reading "
007", the James Bond code number. However, it turns out to be a sticker for local radio station Heart FM whose broadcast frequency is 100.7 MHz.
WMP also rented space within Viceroy House for use by the Economic Crime / Commercial Fraud investigation team. Additionally, Aqua House on Lionel Street, on the other side of the canal, was used for WMP Force Intelligence offices. Furthermore, since 2008 WMP and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have operated another covert facility nearby, housing more specialist investigation teams.
The new Viceroy House development – by designers Javelin Block and architects Bryant Priest Newman – comprises four loft apartments (guide price £850,000), each taking up an entire floor of the former MI5 facility. The ground floor apartment is much smaller (just 56% of the floor area of the other three) due to the internal garages and fire escape route.
In April 2016, the four new apartment owners (a retired Japanese woman, a male UK actor, a female interior designer based in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter and an investment banker from Hertfordshire) formed
Viceroy House Freehold Company Limited.
MI5's former Viceroy House, Birmingham offices in 2018
Now converted to loft apartments
Google Street View
MI5's Viceroy House, Birmingham offices for sale in 2009
Internal garages with blue doors on Water Street
Google Street View
MI5's Viceroy House offices in 2008 and Viceroy House apartments in 2014
Google Street View
MI5's Viceroy House, Birmingham offices in 2012 – gutted for refurbishment
© Javelin Block
MI5's Viceroy House, Birmingham offices in 2014 – the completed loft apartments
© Javelin Block
Bin collection day at West Midlands Police / National Crime Agency
Covert facility in Birmingham city centre
New Spymaster reveals rather too much on the Internet
PermalinkIn November 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the appointment of senior Whitehall civil servant Alex Allan (below right) as new head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which oversees the anti-terrorism activities of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Mr. Allan's own well-documented enthusiasm for the Internet caused a major embarrassment and potential security blunder. The Daily Telegraph first revealed that he had published highly sensitive personal contact information on his own website, which also features pictures of him in his youth. He was forced to urgently delete the material, but it is still available through a well-known web archive and he even registered the domain name at his home address.
News stories:-
Alex Allan's personal website (contact info now removed):-
Archive (most recent version Summer 2007):-
Domain registration details:-
MI5, "Michelle my Belle" – Mistress to the Max
PermalinkThis section was partially censored
due to a court order by lawyers working
for Max Mosley on 4th August 2008
"Woman E" – Mistress Abi. MI5 officer's wife Michelle fielding Kay Burley's questions on Sky News
© Sky News
So the Formula One motor racing governing body's chief Max Mosley got caught with his pants down and the person responsible was the wife of an MI5 Surveillance Officer and famous on the BDSM "scene" working as a Dominatrix in the Milton Keynes area. A tabloid editor's dream – the unholy trinity of sex, spies and money in suburbia.
But the newspapers missed a fascinating detail that was out there in the public domain all the time. The ultimate Secret Base? The location of the regular "dungeon" in a converted garage, used by Mistress Abi (Woman E in the July 2008 court case) – finally revealed as Michelle in her own interview with Sky News. Available on a Bird's Eye aerial photo. But how did I discover it without booking an appointment for a thrashing session myself?
Consider the website Abi / Michelle operated (now defunct). Simply examine the network at IP address [128.242.184.244] on which she and other Mistresses were hosting their websites. Try looking at the domain owner details and you'll draw a blank – all registered through anonymising front companies in America. Except for ONE and ONLY ONE.
The website (also now defunct) for Mistress Mercy, also operating in the Milton Keynes area and sharing the same converted garage kitted out with BDSM equipment, was registered not to an anonymous web hosting company in America but to a woman living in a semi-detached house with large adjoining garage in a quiet cul-de-sac just a short trip down the M1. A tenuous link?
Consider the immediate neighbouring IP address [128.242.184.243]. At the time of the MI5 Mistress Abi story, it was the location of the personal website of director and writer
Simon Edwards [PDF, 70KB], the creative talent behind a forthcoming horror feature film Legion of Blood (original working title: Diabolus). So what? Well, the original Word document of an
interview [PDF, 50KB] Mistress Abi did with a fetish magazine was authored by Simon Edwards. A similar creative talent contributing to this
Mail on Sunday story spotted that. Who could that have been?
Consider the evidence and decide for yourself. There is absolutely no suggestion that Max Mosley visited the "Milton Keynes" location – instead he used the specially rented Chelsea basement apartment featured in news articles.
Mistress Abi is known to have used her own house, but I have photographic proof that Mistress Abi also shared a converted garage facility near her home town with both Mistress Mercy and another called Mistress J. The room layout and equipment is exactly the same. Moreover, a portrait of Abi (Michelle) is on the wall behind Mistress J
in a picture taken in October 2007. Since 2009, Mistress J has been doing business as Madam Citrine in Aylesbury. In 2010, Mistress Mercy transformed into Miss Markwell.
Bold as brass, Michelle relaunched herself in a new persona Mistress Kiera using a website registered in April 2009, much to the disgust of those on "the scene" she had betrayed. Similarly, Mistress Mercy slightly tweaked her name to become Mistress Mercury for a while.
Michelle reinvents herself — Mistress Abi to Mistress Kiera
Section below censored by court order – Monday 4th August 2008
Incidentally, what of Women A to D as referred to in the infamous court case? Mosley's lawyers slapped an injunction on newspapers to prevent identification of them but as I demonstrate here, their details have always been very much public domain – some are film starlets and some have even taken part in a
Race for Life cancer charity event called
Bums on the Run featured on YouTube. So why was a court order served on me?
Woman A was the chief arranger of Max's "parties" and worked as Mistress
CENSORED but also regularly appears as
CENSORED. Woman B was the Mistress using the professional name
CENSORED and known for German spanking in London. Woman C was a regular prison-themed spanking DVD "actress" known as
CENSORED. Woman D was the truly multi-talented former ballerina, Chemistry / Biophysics PhD student and another DVD star working under the name
CENSORED. You can spot all the girls somewhere in a photo gallery of London party events called "Spanking the Cheeky Girls". But which is which?
Oh Mercy. The ultimate Secret Base revealed? Bird's Eye aerial view of Mistress website's domain name registered address
Bing Bird's EyeGoogle Earth causes Secret Bases frenzy
PermalinkAny site which has many buildings and roads laid out in a regular pattern can usually indicate a storage depot of some kind. For instance,
DSDA Longtown
near Carlisle is a massive munitions and equipment store for the Army. DSDA is the Government's Defence Storage and Distribution Agency. On Multimap, their older OS data apparently showed nothing to get excited about, until the data was suddenly revised in November 2004. Before that, you had to go to the Get-a-map site and try again. DSDA Longtown then suddenly came to life. Note the system of rail lines serving the site, too.
In December 1988, DSDA Longtown was also used in the immediate aftermath of the Pan Am Flight 103 Boeing 747 terrorist bombing at Lockerbie, to assemble the fragments before finally shipping them to their final resting place.
New high resolution aerial photography available on Google Earth (and Google Maps) has certainly caused a stir. In early 2006, many excited contributors to Internet discussion forums had a heated debate. It concerned what they were convinced was maybe another DSDA location or Defence Munitions Centre between Culcheth and Glazebury near Warrington, Cheshire. The
mysterious depot, alongside the A580 "East Lancs Road" between Liverpool and Manchester, is certainly laid out in the classic munitions underground bunker pattern and there's even evidence of a disused train branch line nearby too.
Some of the forum board enthusiasts suggested it might also be a hitherto undocumented secure storage facility, using hangars to hide top secret military projects. If that wasn't enough, I can exclusively reveal that there's even a
"secret" junction
on the westbound carriageway of the A580, allowing direct "back door" access to the depot by a dedicated private road.
The Google Earth imagery shows that there's also a rather convenient gap in the crash barrier of the central reservation at this point. The theme of special slip roads and secret junctions is carried on in the other parts of Secret Bases – make sure you visit them all.
However, to borrow Michael Winner's catchphrase in a well-known advertisement on TV, "Calm down, dear". A little straightforward research would have revealed that the site is indeed a storage depot, but it is the old Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Nobel Explosives depot, for mining and quarrying operations, etc.
More recently it has been operated by Orica, the new global parent company name. They refer to the depot as their Glazebury Distribution Hub for UK operations. Orica's other main UK explosives distribution depot is at
Muirside, Blairhall near Dunfermline in Scotland. An additional storage facility can be spotted in the middle of farmers' fields at the village of
Fisherwick, close to Whittington near Lichfield in Staffordshire. ICI-Nobel's original disused
Ardeer Factory, used for producing nitroglycerine, can be found on the Ayrshire coast in Scotland, bounded by the towns of Irvine, Stevenston and Kilwinning.
BBC Vigil Series 2: Dundair Air Weapons Range
In December 2023, the second series of the BBC's Vigil conspiracy thriller (starring Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie) portrayed a fictitious Scottish military test facility called Dundair Air Weapons Range, While the first series was about nuclear submarines, the sequel featured rogue drones (sorry, RPAS – Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems). Location managers for the production chose the old Nobel Ardeer site near Stevenston as Dundair.
In key action sequences, the chimneys of the former Stevenston Power Plant could be seen in the background while the foreground featured the derelict Africa House. In certain other camera shots, the neighbouring British Polythene Industry BPI Visqueen factory lurked in the background.
BBC's Vigil: Dundair Air Weapons Range
Stevenston Power Plant (background) and Africa House (foreground) at the Ardeer Nobel Explosives Factory
BBC Vigil Series 2
Going back to Glazebury, take a trip further west along the A580 East Lancs Road into Merseyside and then at St. Helens, turn off onto the A570 north towards Rainford. Another apparent
munitions depot
can be found in the middle of fields along Dairy Farm Road. This is now known as Mosspark Warehousing Units but St. Helens Council's planning applications website lists it as a "former War Department Depot". It would therefore seem to have been used during WWII as an ammunition and/or explosives depot. Note the suggestion of a train branch line from the nearby main line.
A similar pattern of buildings can be found in a rather unlikely location in County Durham in the North East. Take a look at the old
Brasside munitions dump
near the remains of the Abbey at Finchale Priory, to the north of the city of Durham, on the banks of the River Wear on Framwellgate Moor.
It's just north of the high security Frankland Prison and its neighbouring Low Newton Remand Centre – and there's a clue. The whole area was requisitioned by the Government's War Department during World War Two and that's why the prisons were subsequently built on their site – previously various old brick and tile works. The now disused munitions storage base to the north was used as a Royal Naval armaments depot and it was connected into the two adjacent main train lines (west and east) by wagonway tracks – long since gone.
Down in the south of England, in the rolling Wiltshire countryside between Amesbury and Salisbury, you can find what looks like an isolated village consisting of tightly packed houses, each surrounded by blast protecting revetments. However, a much closer look reveals the
Chemring Countermeasures
pyrotechnics factory at High Post, just south west of the end of the main runway for the huge airbase at RAF Boscombe Down. Indeed, the new high resolution data uploaded to Google Earth in 2006 shows a Nimrod R1 plane on its final approach, flying over the Chemring main entrance and staff car park and casting a shadow over one of the main buildings.
The newer MRA4 variant (Maritime Reconnaissance and Attack) aircraft is used for anti-submarine and anti-surface unit warfare plus search and rescue missions. Be sure to check out the rest of Secret Bases, in which I reveal the location where
TWO MRA4s can be spotted parked together on the ground – and it's
NOT Boscombe Down.
The Chemring factory (formerly known as Pains Wessex) manufactures and tests the chaff and decoys used to avoid attack by, for example, heat-seeking missiles. According to its own
website, the Chemring facility is a world leader in threat weapon systems and missile countermeasures solutions. It specialises in the design, manufacture and worldwide distribution of a comprehensive range of RF (Radio Frequency) and IR (Infra Red) decoy cartridges for airborne, naval and land applications across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Aerial views of ICI/Orica's Explosives Storage Depots at Glazebury (top), Muirside, Dunfermline (middle) and Fisherwick, Lichfield (bottom)
Aerial view of former War Department Depot at Rainford
Aerial view of Chemring Countermeasures pyrotechnics factory at High Post, Salisbury, Wiltshire
Aerial view of a Nimrod R1 (predecessor of the MR2 and MRA4 Maritime Reconnaissance and Attack aircraft) on its final approach to RAF Boscombe Down, flying over the Chemring factory
Google Earth reveals two new Nimrod MRA4s parked together – but where?
Secret Bases revealed in flight
PermalinkIn September 2006, a dedicated "Secret Bases" fan sent me some stunning pictures taken on a flight in a private jet over the Hoo peninsula, along the River Medway near the towns of Rochester, Gillingham and Chatham in Kent. You don't need Getmapping and Google Earth when you've got your own pilot's licence and a camera assistant.
The pictures reveal the old Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) at
Chattenden Barracks
which was used by the historic dockyard at nearby Chatham. It had its own rail system serving the depot from a terminal at Upnor to the south and a branch from Sharnal Street to the east. In more recent decades, Chattenden Barracks was home to the Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) who made use of the old naval depots to the north. The main depot to the east was turned into the
Lodge Hill Training Area
and some
impressive bunkers
can be seen in another old munitions enclosure to the west.
Lodge Hill Camp, to the north west, was home to the Defence Explosive Ordnance Disposal School (DEODS), the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technical Information Centre (EODTIC) and also the Police National Search Centre (PNSC). Look on Google Earth and you can even spot a Phantom jet being worked on in the camp.
It seems that Medway Council has controversial plans to use the various Chattenden sites for thousands of new homes. Apparently, many of the RSME Chattenden functions have already been moved over to the Royal Engineers' base at
Gibraltar Barracks
at Minley, Surrey, near Farnborough Airfield.
In June 2007, it was officially announced by the MoD that the DEODS, EODTIC and PNSC functions at Lodge Hill Camp, Chattenden would be eventually relocated to existing and new facilities to be built at
St. George's Barracks
to the south of Arncott Wood at Bicester, Oxfordshire. It is amongst all the huge military equipment storage bases around Upper Arncott and Ambrosden, discussed elsewhere in Secret Bases.
While flying over the Chattenden area, my correspondent also captured an impressive shot of the remains of the WWI
munitions factory
at Lower Hope Point on Cliffe Marshes, just a few miles to the north west. The history of the Chattenden Naval Rail System, including fascinating detailed maps, can be found in the archives of the Industrial Railway Society:-
When the storage of military munitions goes wrong, it has spectacular but devastating, tragic effects – as the workers and residents around the top secret World War Two underground munitions depot known as
RAF Fauld
near Tutbury, Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire found to their cost. In November 1944, almost 4000 tons of high explosives were accidentally triggered in one of the world's largest non-nuclear explosions. The massive crater left behind can be seen in another exclusive stunning
Pilot's Eye View from my specialist contributor.
Google Earth censorship? The truth revealed
PermalinkIn 2006, more excited Google Earth fans contacted me again, all hot and bothered over a very suspicious and mysterious "black hole". The blacked-out rectangle was apparently censoring the hi-res aerial photography alongside the M4 motorway at Osterley, between Ealing and Hounslow in West London, not far from Heathrow Airport. My correspondents wondered if it was concealing a Secret Base. Some wags even quipped that the Google Earth "black hole" resembled the enigmatic monolith in the classic 1960s sci-fi film "2001 – A Space Odyssey".
Once again, some simple research shows that the estate just to the west of the left hand edge of the missing block turns out to be
The Aviary, a London residence of the Sultan of Brunei, on Windmill Lane north of Osterley Park. Click on the image below to reveal the shocking truth (!) behind the sinister black curtain, using Getmapping's aerial photo from 2002. Did the Sultan ask Google nicely to protect his privacy? Hardly. It's just a data glitch – one of several around the planet's coverage – that was eventually fixed in Autumn 2006, when a new data revision for the whole of London was uploaded.
The only military connection is that during WWII, Osterley Park played host to the Home Guard Training School – the original "Dad's Army". As for a Secret Base ... as Captain Mainwaring famously said, "Don't tell him, Pike".
In Summer 2007, there was even more censorship conspiracy excitement. An area just to the west of
Sydenham
village, bounded by Tetsworth and Kingston Tert, between the towns of Thame and Chinnor in Oxfordshire was blocked-out by another Google Earth black hole.
There are plenty of famous Oxfordshire military establishments for miles around. But I can assure you that – as
Getmapping's imagery from Windows Live Local confirms – the only things under that black rectangle are the farmers' fields around Prospect Hill.
Put simply, another innocent data glitch had been caused by a major imagery update in June 2007. There are positively no alien autopsies, programmable life form developments, UFO back-engineering projects or Government mind control experiments going on in vast underground laboratories beneath Sydenham. Honest.
As for
Peasemore
near Newbury, Berkshire – well that's another story completely. Sorry, just teasing. It's a very famous – entertaining, but completely daft – Internet conspiracy story that has been doing the rounds for many years. It only gained momentum because of its proximity to real military bases a few miles away, plus the fact that a well-known research scientist working in farm livestock genetics lives in the village, which itself is dotted with disused chalk pit workings.
Aerial view of mysterious blank area on Google Earth at Osterley, West London
Click on the image above to reveal!
Going back to the Defence Storage and Distribution Agency (DSDA): take a look also at the Army Base Repair Organisation (ABRO) whose HQ is at
Andover
in Hampshire. Consider too, the Defence Aviation Repair Agency (DARA) whose HQ can be found at
St. Athan, near Barry in South Wales. ABRO and DARA provide engineering maintenance expertise to the Army and RAF, respectively.
DARA has key sites dotted around the UK at
Fleetlands
in Gosport, Hampshire, at
Sealand
in Deeside, Flintshire and at
Almondbank
near Perth in Scotland, on the banks of the River Almond as the name suggests. However, DARA Almondbank has two other old depots dating from WWII, comprising workshops and storage sheds now in various stages of dereliction, secreted in clearings in woodland to the north at
Pitcairngreen
and
Cromwellpark.
Still in the central belt of Scotland, take a look further south west. Consider the banks of the River Forth in the city of Stirling, within sight of the Wallace Monument and right next door to the £90 million Forthside regeneration project for 2007. Here you'll find a
huge MoD facility
containing, wait for it, an ABRO & DSDA depot, a Territorial Army centre, an NHS emergency planning team for the Scottish Ambulance Service and a highways maintenance yard for council vehicles. Oh, there's also the "northern office" for the Defence Communications Services Agency (DCSA), discussed throughout Secret Bases.
The Forthside project is also "tastefully" converting some 19th Century Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders army barracks on adjacent land to provide trendy loft apartments, business premises and retail outlets, to go with the inevitable multiplex cinema.
Both DARA and ABRO were seriously affected by
severe defence cuts announced by the MoD in November 2005 which put the future of the whole St. Athan base in doubt. But in January 2007, it was announced that St. Athan was to be the location for a new
Defence Training Academy. In April 2008, ABRO and DARA merged to form DSG – the Defence Support Group. Also in 2008, the Rotary Wing divisions of DARA at Fleetlands and Almondbank were acquired by the Canadian helicopter maintenance corporation Vector Aerospace.
DARA Fleetlands is right next door to the Royal Naval Armaments Depots –
RNAD Gosport
and
RNAD Frater. Up to November 2004, when the data was suddenly revised, both depots were mysteriously absent from the older Multimap 1:50000 scale maps. Until then, you had to hop over to Ordnance Survey's own Get-a-map service and consult their 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps of the whole area which told the true story.
Another RNAD site can be spotted just north of the Tamar Bridge at
Ernesettle
in Plymouth, Devon. Note the handy train line going right past the depot. Now take another look, this time at the south side of the Tamar Bridge and you'll find the location for the Royal Navy's proposed Remote Ammunitioning Facility Tamar (RAFT), at
Bull Point, on the edge of the Plymouth communities of St. Budeaux and Barne Barton.
The new RAFT development would have allowed nuclear-powered submarines to be loaded with their weapons in a high security and controlled environment. However, newer independent risk assessments had shown that the need for a remote arming jetty was no longer so acute, as the risks to the public of weapons explosion could be safely contained within the existing "alongside" facilities at HMNB Devonport next door.
The project was suspended, after much preparatory work, in May 2002 and finally cancelled in December 2004. The original planning consent from Plymouth City Council had also expired in May 2004. The cancellation of RAFT resulted in a Government accounts "write-off" of £25M, as the original approved cost of £29M had already spiralled to £45M.
Back to buildings in a regular pattern with a train line system: another example can be found at
Bramley
in Hampshire, near Basingstoke. The
aerial photo shows the sort of fascinating detail which is not apparent on the ground. This is a former Defence Munitions (DM) storage depot and is now used as an Army training area. It was also used as one of the filming locations for the Channel 4 TV programme Scrapheap Challenge.
Bramley Training Area is the home of "21 SAS" – the Territorial Army reservists, supporting the active "22 SAS" soldiers in Hereford. More details of Bramley's activities, including the precise location and ground photos of the derelict farm building used for close quarters combat training, can be found elsewhere in Secret Bases.
One of the largest examples of an old munitions depot with a train line system in the UK is at the vast Shoeburyness weapons testing range, near Southend-on-Sea on the Essex coast. The huge area is actually also used as a
graveyard
for the storage and scrapping of redundant carriages from trains and London Underground tubes, in what is known locally as the MoD Pig's Bay depot.
In the Bird's Eye photo from Windows Live Local below, you can spot just one section from what is possibly the longest ghost train in the UK, in a
remote corner
of the test range, in front of a curious building almost 240 metres long. The Atomic Weapons Establishment's own website reveals that the building is a former nuclear blast shock wave simulator tunnel, previously used by AWE Foulness. Military vehicles such as AS90 Howitzers would be tested for the effects of shock waves in the
simulator tunnel (an extreme version of a shock tube), using specialist laser light and photographic equipment to quantify the results. My regular Pilot's Eye contributor has provided an exclusive view of one part of the old AWE Foulness site at
Churchend, now operated by QinetiQ (of which more later).
Bird's Eye view of a train graveyard (background) and AWE Foulness nuclear blast shock wave simulator for tanks (foreground) at QinetiQ's Shoeburyness Weapons Test Range near Southend-on-Sea, Essex
Bing Bird's Eye
Remote Ammunitioning Facility Tamar (RAFT) Bull Point, Barne Barton, HMNB Devonport, Plymouth
Google Maps 3D