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The BT Communication Tower is a grade II listed
communications tower Radio masts and towers are typically tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. There are two main types: guyed and self-supporting structures. They are among the tallest human-made ...
located in
Fitzrovia Fitzrovia () is a district of central London, England, near the West End. The eastern part of area is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urban ...
,
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, owned by
BT Group BT Group plc ( trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, bro ...
. Originally named the Museum Radio Tower (after the adjacent Museum telephone exchange), it became better known by its unofficial name, the Post Office Tower. It was later officially renamed the Telecom Tower. The main structure is high, with a further section of aerial rigging bringing the total height to . Upon completion in 1964, it overtook the Millbank Tower to become the tallest structure in London until 1980, when it in turn was overtaken by the
NatWest Tower Tower 42, commonly known as the NatWest Tower, is a skyscraper in the City of London. It is the fifth-tallest tower in the City of London, having been overtaken as the tallest in 2010 by the Heron Tower. It is the fifteenth- tallest in Lond ...
.


History


20th century


Commissioning and construction

The tower was commissioned by the
General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II in 1660. ...
(GPO). Its primary purpose was to support the
microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...
aerials then used to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country, as part of the General Post Office microwave network. It replaced a much shorter steel lattice tower which had been built on the roof of the neighbouring Museum telephone exchange in the late 1940s to provide a television link between London and Birmingham. The taller structure was required to protect the radio links' "line of sight" against some of the tall buildings in London then in the planning stage. These links were routed via other GPO microwave stations at
Harrow Weald Harrow Weald is a suburban district in Greater London, England. Located about north of Harrow, Harrow Weald is formed from a leafy 1930s suburban development along with ancient woodland of Harrow Weald Common. It forms part of the London Bor ...
,
Bagshot Bagshot is a town in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton and the West Country, evidenced by the original ...
,
Kelvedon Hatch Kelvedon Hatch is a village in civil parish of Kelvedon Hatch, in the Borough of Brentwood in south Essex, England. It is situated just north of Pilgrims Hatch, approximately to the north of Brentwood and is surrounded by Metropolitan Green ...
and Fairseat, and to places like the London Air Traffic Control Centre at
West Drayton West Drayton is a suburban town in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It was an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex and from 1929 was part of the Yiewsley and West Drayton Urban District, which became part of Greater London in 1965. Th ...
. The tower was designed by the
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
s of the Ministry of Public Building and Works: the chief architects were Eric Bedford and G. R. Yeats. Typical for its time, the building is concrete clad in glass. The narrow cylindrical shape was chosen because of the requirements of the communications aerials: the building will shift no more than in wind speeds of up to 150 km/h (95 mph). Initially, the first 16 floors were for technical equipment and power. Above that was a 35-metre section for the
microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...
aerials, and above that were six floors of suites, kitchens, technical equipment, a revolving restaurant, and finally a
cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...
ed steel lattice tower. To prevent heat build-up, the glass cladding was of a special tint. The construction cost was £2.5 million. Construction began in June 1961; owing to the building's height and its having a tower crane jib across the top virtually throughout the whole construction period, it gradually became a very prominent landmark that could be seen from almost anywhere in London. A question was raised in Parliament in August 1963 about the crane. Reginald Bennett MP asked the Minister of Public Buildings and Works, Geoffrey Rippon, how, when the crane on the top of the new Tower had fulfilled its purpose, he proposed to remove it. Rippon replied: "This is a matter for the contractors. The problem does not have to be solved for about a year but there appears to be no danger of the crane having to be left in situ." The tower was
topped out In building construction, topping out (sometimes referred to as topping off) is a builders' rite traditionally held when the last beam (or its equivalent) is placed atop a structure during its construction. Nowadays, the ceremony is often parlaye ...
on 15 July 1964, and officially opened by the then Prime Minister
Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
on 8 October 1965. The main contractor was Peter Lind & Company. The tower was originally designed to be just high; its foundations are sunk down through of
London clay The London Clay Formation is a marine geological formation of Ypresian (early Eocene Epoch, c. 56–49 million years ago) age which crops out in the southeast of England. The London Clay is well known for its fossil content. The fossils from ...
, and are formed of a concrete raft square, thick, reinforced with six layers of cables, on top of which sits a reinforced concrete pyramid.


Opening and use

The tower was officially opened to the public on 19 May 1966, by
Postmaster General A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official responsib ...
Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, ...
(then known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn) and
Billy Butlin Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin (29 September 189912 June 1980) was a South African-born British entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp.'' American Heritage Dictionary 2004'', p. 135. Scott 2001, p. 5. A ...
, with
HM Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
visiting on 17 May 1966. As well as the communications equipment and office space, there were viewing galleries, a souvenir shop and a
rotating restaurant A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is usually a tower restaurant eating space designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on ...
on the 34th floor; this was called The Top of the Tower, and operated by
Butlins Butlin's is a chain of large seaside resorts in the United Kingdom. Butlin's was founded by Billy Butlin to provide affordable holidays for ordinary British families. Between 1936 and 1966, ten camps were built, including one in Ireland and o ...
. It made one revolution every 23 minutes. In its first year the Tower hosted just under one million visitors and over 100,000 diners ate in the restaurant.


1971 bombing

A bomb exploded in the roof of the men's toilets at the Top of the Tower restaurant at 04:30 on 31 October 1971, the blast damaged buildings and cars up to 400 yards away. Responsibility for the bomb was claimed by members of the Angry Brigade, a far-left
anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...
collective. A call was also made by a person claiming to be the Kilburn Battalion of the IRA. That act resulted in the tower being largely closed to the general public. The restaurant was closed to the public for security reasons a matter of months after the bombing in 1971. In 1980, Butlins' lease expired. Public access to the building ceased in 1981. The tower is sometimes used for corporate events, such as a children's Christmas party in December, '' Children in Need'', and other special events; even though it is closed, the tower retains its revolving floor, providing a full panorama over London and the surrounding area.


Races up the tower

The first documented race up the tower's stairs was on 18 April 1968, between
University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...
and
Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted ...
; it was won by an Edinburgh runner in 4 minutes, 46 seconds. In 1969, eight university teams competed, with John Pearson from
Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
winning in a time of 5 minutes, 6 seconds.


Secrecy

Due to its importance to the national communications network, information about the tower was designated an official secret. In 1978, the journalist Duncan Campbell was
tried In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, ...
for collecting information about secret locations, and during the trial the judge ordered that the sites could not be identified by name; the tower could only be referred to as 'Location 23'. It is often said that the tower did not appear on
Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...
maps, despite being a tall structure in the middle of central London that was open to the public for about 15 years. However, this is incorrect; the 1:25,000 (published 1971) and 1:10,000 (published 1981) Ordnance Survey maps show the tower. It is also shown in the London A–Z street atlas from 1984. In February 1993, the MP Kate Hoey used the tower as an example of trivial information being kept officially secret, and joked that she hoped
parliamentary privilege Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties ...
allowed her to confirm that the tower existed and to state its street address.


21st century

The tower is still in use, and is the site of a major UK communications hub.
Microwave link Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300MHz to 300GHz(1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally li ...
s have been replaced by subterranean
optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...
links for most mainstream purposes, but the former are still in use at the tower. The second floor of the base of the tower contains the TV Network Switching Centre which carries broadcasting traffic and relays signals between television broadcasters, production companies, advertisers, international satellite services and uplink companies. The outside broadcast control is located above the former revolving restaurant, with the kitchens on floor 35. A renovation in the early 2000s introduced a 360° coloured lighting display at the top of the tower. Seven colours were programmed to vary constantly at night and intended to appear as a rotating globe to reflect BT's "connected world" corporate styling. The coloured lights give the tower a conspicuous presence on the London skyline at night. In October 2009, a 360° full-colour LED-based display system was installed at the top of the tower, to replace the previous colour projection system. The new display, referred to by BT as the "Information Band", is wrapped around the 36th and 37th floors of the tower, up, and comprises 529,750 LEDs arranged in 177 vertical strips, spaced around the tower. The display was the largest of its type in the world, occupying an area of and with a circumference of . The display is switched off at 10.30pm each day. On 31 October 2009, the screen began displaying a countdown of the number of days until the start of the London Olympics in 2012. In April 2019, the display spent almost a day displaying a
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
error message. In October 2009, ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'' reported that the rotating restaurant would be reopened in time for the 2012 London Olympics. However, in December 2010, it was further announced that the plans to reopen had now been "quietly dropped", with no explanation of the decision. For the tower's 50th anniversary, the 34th floor was opened for three days from 3 to 5 October 2015 to 2,400 winners of a lottery. The BT Tower was given Grade II
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...
status in 2003. Several of the defunct antennae attached to the building could not be removed unless the appropriate listed building consent was granted, for they were protected by this listing. Permission for the removal of the defunct antennae was approved in 2011 on safety grounds, for they were in a bad state of repair and the fixings were no longer secure. The last of the antennas was removed in December 2011, leaving the core of the tower visible. Entry to the building is by two high-speed lifts, which travel at a top speed of 1400 feet per minute () and reach the top of the building in under 30 seconds. An
Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of parliame ...
was passed to vary fire regulations, allowing the building to be evacuated by using the lifts – unlike other buildings of the time. In 2006, the tower began to be used for short-term air-quality observations by the
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is a centre for excellence in environmental science across water, land and air. The organisation has a long history of investigating, monitoring and modelling environmental change, and its science ma ...
and this has continued in a more permanent form as BT Tower Observatory, an urban atmospheric pollution observatory to help monitor air quality in the capital. The aim is to measure pollutant levels above ground level to determine their source. One area of investigation is the long-range transport of fine particles from outside the city.


In popular culture

The tower has appeared in various novels, films, and television shows including '' Smashing Time'', ''
The Bourne Ultimatum ''The Bourne Ultimatum'' is the third Jason Bourne novel written by Robert Ludlum and a sequel to ''The Bourne Supremacy'' (1986). First published in 1990, it was the last Bourne novel to be written by Ludlum himself. Eric Van Lustbader wrote ...
'', ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...
'', ''
V for Vendetta ''V for Vendetta'' is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd (with additional art by Tony Weare). Initially published between 1982 and 1985 in black and white as an ongoing serial in the British anthol ...
'', and '' Danger Mouse''. It is toppled by a giant kitten in the 1971 '' The Goodies'' episode "
Kitten Kong "Kitten Kong" is an episode of the British comedy television series '' The Goodies'', written by The Goodies, with songs and music by Bill Oddie. Plot Bill is cooking when Graeme and Tim return from chess championships. Graeme and Tim are hu ...
", a parody of ''
King Kong King Kong is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. He has been dubbed The Eighth Wonder of the World, a phrase commonly used within the franchise. His first appearance was in the novelizat ...
''.


Gallery

File:Post Office Tower during construction.jpg, BT Tower under construction in the 1960s File:View from the Post Office Tower in 1966 (4) (geograph 6862425).jpg, View of the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
and the
Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
from the BT Tower, 1966 File:Tottenham Court Road a Great Russel Street torkolatál, szemben a Euston Tower felhőkarcoló, balra a BT Tower TV torony látszik. Fortepan 100630.jpg, BT Tower in 1970 File:BT Tower.jpg, BT Tower from Queen's Tower, 2007


See also

*
List of masts The tallest structure in the world is the Burj Khalifa skyscraper at . Listed are guyed masts (such as telecommunication masts), self-supporting towers (such as the CN Tower), skyscrapers (such as the Willis Tower), oil platforms, electricity ...
* List of tallest buildings and structures in Great Britain *
List of towers Several extant building fulfill the engineering definition of a tower: "a tall human structure, always taller than it is wide, for public or regular operational access by humans, but not for living in or office work, and are ''self-supporting' ...
*
List of tallest buildings and structures in London St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1710, was the tallest building in London at until it was overtaken in 1963 by the Millbank Tower at , which in turn was overtaken by the BT Tower which topped out at tall in 1964. In the 1960s and 1970s several h ...
* Telecommunications towers in the UK * Telecom infrastructure sharing


References


External links

* * . Retrieved on 21 January 2015. *
Post Office Tower

The official tower guide, archive film footage, and more.
* *


"Thirty-six Views of a London Tower..."
A short film with the BT Tower in every shot.
BT Tower building information & photos
{{UKSkyscrapers, Completed British Telecom buildings and structures BT Group Butlins Communication towers in the United Kingdom Fitzrovia General Post Office Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Camden Observation towers in the United Kingdom Radio masts and towers in Europe Skyscraper office buildings in London Skyscrapers in the London Borough of Camden Towers completed in 1964 Towers in London Towers with revolving restaurants Tourist attractions in the London Borough of Camden