Adastral Park is a science campus based on part of the old

Royal Air Force Station This list of Royal Air Force stations is an overview of all current stations of the Royal Air Force (RAF) throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. This includes front-line and training airbases, support, administrative and training statio ...

Martlesham Heath Martlesham Heath is a village in Suffolk, England. It is east of Ipswich, This was an ancient area of heathland and latterly the site of Martlesham Heath Airfield. A "new village" was established there in the mid-1970s and this has developed in ...

, near

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

in the English county of Suffolk. When the site opened it was known as the

Post Office Research Station The Post Office Research Station was first established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. In 1921, the Research Station moved to Dollis Hill, north west London, initially in ex-army huts. The main permanent buildings at ...

, but it was subsequently renamed BT Research Laboratories or BT Labs and later Adastral Park to reflect an expansion in the organisations and activities co-located with BT Labs at the campus.

History

The original laboratories (when BT was part of the

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

) were first opened by

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

in 1975. Prior to this the

was at

Dollis Hill Dollis Hill is an area in northwest London, which consists of the streets surrounding the Gladstone Park, London, Gladstone Park. It is served by a London Underground station, Dollis Hill tube station, Dollis Hill, on the Jubilee line, providi ...

in northwest London. Martlesham Heath was chosen as the site for a research facility because the surrounding countryside was relatively flat and therefore ideal for testing the radio-based communication systems in vogue at the time. Initially, research was carried out into postal sorting and delivery technology, and telecommunications. After the Post Office was split apart and prior to British Telecom's privatisation in the early 1980s, the research concentrated on telecommunications. In keeping with the stellar theme of the site name, buildings on site are named after stars or constellations (an example being the Main Laboratory Block now named the Orion building). The Orion building is easily recognisable from the nearby A12 road with its radio tower, now named Pegasus tower, dominating the skyline. The change to the current name occurred in the late 1990s with the aim of turning the site into a high-technology business park, no longer exclusively for the use of BT. The name was created by Stewart Davies, the CEO of the BT business (BT Exact Technologies) headquartered at the site at that time. It is derived from the motto of the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

—''per ardua ad astra'' ("through adversity to the stars"). The Royal Air Force were prior residents of the site, as

RAF Martlesham Heath Royal Air Force Martlesham Heath or more simply RAF Martlesham Heath is a former Royal Air Force station located southwest of Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. It was active between 1917 and 1963, and played an important role in the development o ...

. Experimental aircraft test flights flew from the airfield and the name was meant to reflect this. In March 2001,

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, chose Adastral Park to set up the first-ever postgraduate research and teaching centre on an industrial campus, which was housed there until 2009. During the transformation of the business park, many of the old buildings were removed and car parks were moved to the perimeter of the site, with the centre made into open parkland with a water feature to provide a 'park' feel to the complex. The site accommodates approximately 4,000 people.

Current use

Companies based at Adastral Park besides BT (BT Applied Research) include: *

Openreach Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintain telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to various national broadband and telephone networks. T ...

* F5 Networks *

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including Router (computing), routers, Network switch, switches, network management so ...

* GENBAND * Maly IT Solutions *

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

* Coderus.com *CommsUnite * Fujitsu *

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

* O2 plc * Arqiva * CIP * Milner Strategic Marketing There is also a

satellite earth station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...

operated by Arqiva; the location was chosen for the visibility of satellites on the eastern horizon. In 2018 there were 98 high-tech companies at the site.

Peregrine falcons

BT worked with the Hawk and Owl Trust to set up a nesting box for a pair of

peregrine falcon The peregrine falcon (''Falco peregrinus''), also known simply as the peregrine, is a Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan bird of prey (raptor) in the family (biology), family Falconidae renowned for its speed. A large, Corvus (genus), cro ...

s. These produced two chicks in 2019, and in 2020 a YouTube channel was set up and three chicks were produced.

Adastral New Town

Over many years, BT has put forward various proposals and plans to expand activities at the business park. In June 2001, a framework for expanding the business park was created, but it was not linked to building any residential housing on the site. At the time BT forecast 3000 to 3500 additional jobs by about 2010. In 2007, BT said that they could develop the business park without the need for the income from selling land for housing. In 2006,

Suffolk Coastal District Council Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

(SCDC) rejected a planning application for 120 log cabins on a site next to Waldringfield Road. The rejection was on the grounds that it was too near the

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is one of 46 areas of countryside in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Since 2023, the areas in England an ...

amongst other reasons, and would result in an unacceptable increase in visitor numbers to a sensitive areas. BT initially objected on the grounds that it would interfere with their radio test area, although BT subsequently withdrew their objection provided the developer created a protective earth bund, rejected by SCDC. BT subsequently lodged a planning application for 2000 houses to be built. At its closest the site comes within of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and there are several

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

close by, such as Newbourne Springs. In April 2018, SCDC (subsequently merged with a neighbouring council to become

East Suffolk District Council East Suffolk is a local government district in Suffolk, England. The largest town is Lowestoft, which contains Ness Point, the easternmost point of the United Kingdom. The second largest town is Felixstowe, which has the country's largest con ...

) gave outline permission for the development, which is now named Brightwell Lakes.

References

External links