Bodmin Radio Station

Bodmin is a highly important site in the history of radio. It was the first of Marconi's Short Wave Beam stations, opening for traffic in 1926.

The following is reproduced by kind permission of Cornwall County Council:

"British Telecom’s Bodmin Radio Station is the oldest short-wave radio station in the world ands also the site of the first of the Dominion Beam wireless radio stations, transmitting to Canada, South Africa and Australia under the GPO. Marconi was directly involved in the setting up of the Bodmin Radio Station which opened to traffic on Monday 25 October 1926, when he handed control over to the Post Office from the Marconi Company Limited. Beam wireless stations undermined the Dominion’s privately owned submarine cable companies - to avoid their collapse a merger of the cable companies and wireless stations took place in 1929, forming Cable and Wireless Limited. In 1929, Bodmin relayed a thanksgiving service from Westminster Abbey to celebrate King George V’s recovery from illness.

Since 1947, Bodmin Radio has carried high frequency services for the Admiralty operated from Whitehall to naval ships and bases abroad. In the 1980’s, for several years, it served the Cabinet Office with the Moscow direct ‘hot line’ service until it was transferred on to satellite. Bodmin Radio closed officially at midnight on 31 March 2002 and attention is now being focused on its future."

The original antenna systems may have looked like those at Marconi Radio Station Dorchester, of which photographs were taken in 1937/38. However since at least when I first saw the site in the mid 1970's the antenna 'farm' consisted of the usual arrays of half-rhombics and dipoles fed with overhead twin feeder.

OS Grid Ref: SX015625

It is located next to the A30 1.5km west of the junction with the A391 at Innis.

The original antenna systems may have looked like those at Marconi Radio Station Dorchester, of which photographs were taken in 1937/38.

However the last antenna 'farm' consisted of the usual arrays of half-rhombics and dipoles fed with overhead twin feeder.


Current State:

The site closed in March 2002. in February 2003 some masts remained, although obviously in a poor state of repair with individual wires hanging down. In February 2005 though, all had gone. The buildings are still present and look in good condition. The site is secure and still has the BT sign at the entrance.

The aerial photos show no mast shadows, only the overgrown grass inside the guy-rings. So it might be that the masts had been demolished when the current photograph was taken. This is a pity, because analysis of the photographs of Rugby allows virtually every mast to be located by its shadow (please see 'Radio Archaelogy' for more details).

* Did you work at Bodmin? Please contact me if you can provide more information.

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