RAF Rudloe Manor, formerly RAF Box, was a

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 ...

station north-east of

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

, England, between the settlements of

Box A box (plural: boxes) is a container with rigid sides used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides (typically rectangular prisms). Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or v ...

and

Corsham Corsham is a historic market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. It is at the southwestern edge of the Cotswolds, just off the A4 road (England), A4 national route. It is southwest of Swindon, east of ...

, in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

. It was one of several military installations in the area and covered three dispersed sites. Parts of the site are now used by Defence Digital within the MoD Corsham complex; other areas are vacant and some have been sold, including the 17th-century manor house, Rudloe Manor.

Second World War

The station was established on top of quarries from which

Bath stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate originally obtained from the Middle Jurassic aged Great Oolite Group of the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its h ...

had been extracted. In the 1930s some of the tunnels had been converted for use as a Central Ammunition Depot. The vast caverns had some of space, divided into many smaller chambers. During the Second World War, the Operations Centre of No. 10 Group RAF was housed there in three buildings (Operations Room, Filter Room and Communications Centre), which were partially buried for protection, in a similar way to buildings for No. 9 Group at RAF Barton Hall, No. 11 Group RAF at

RAF Uxbridge RAF Uxbridge was a Royal Air Force (RAF) station in Uxbridge, within the London Borough of Hillingdon, occupying a site that originally belonged to the Hillingdon House estate. The British Government purchased the estate in 1915, three years b ...

, No. 12 Group RAF at RAF Watnall, No. 13 Group RAF at RAF Newcastle and No. 14 Group RAF at

Raigmore House Raigmore House was a country house in Raigmore, Inverness. History The house was designed by Archibald Simpson and constructed for Lachlan Mackintosh of Raigmore, a merchant who had returned from Kolkata, Calcutta, in about 1810. On Lachlan Mack ...

in Inverness.

Operations room

The operations room, responsible for directing RAF aircraft in the No. 10 Group area, was initially established in a block adjacent to the manor house in June 1940. The area covered by No. 10 Group encompassed South West England and South Wales. Later in the year the operations room was relocated into the north end of an underground bunker in Browns Quarry. The operations room became disused in May 1945 when No. 10 Group was disbanded.

Filter room

The Filter Room, responsible for filtering large quantities of intelligence on enemy activity before it was passed to the operations room, was located in the south end of the underground bunker in Browns Quarry and became operational in 1940. The filter room became disused in May 1945 when No. 10 Group was disbanded. Eileen Younghusband, who served in various filter rooms, recounted her experiences at Rudloe Manor in her 2011 memoir, ''One Woman's War''. The Communications centre was located in the west part of the underground bunker in Browns Quarry. The members of the

Women's Auxiliary Air Force The Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), whose members were referred to as WAAFs (), was the female auxiliary of the British Royal Air Force during the World War II, Second World War. Established in 1939, WAAF numbers exceeded 181,000 at its peak ...

who staffed the underground bunker were billeted at nearby Hartham Park.

Units

RAF units using the site were:

Post-war

RAF Rudloe Manor is known as "Britain's

Area 51 Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force B ...

" since declassified secret files released at the National Archives indicated the site was the centre for UFO investigations in the 1950s. The wider site continued as both a communications hub and home of various administrative units. No.1 Signals Unit was established to manage all UK terrestrial communications infrastructure for the RAF. With the launch of the UK Satellite Communications System, Skynet, in the late 1960s, the site of Controller Defence Communications Network (CDCN) was established. A spacecraft operations centre was established by 1001 Signals Unit, the spacecraft operations organisation, on a small enclave within the site, known as Hawthorn. The headquarters of the RAF Provost and Security Service was established nearby, although on the closure of the station it moved to RAF Henlow. RAF Rudloe Manor was the location of Headquarters Southern Area Royal Observer Corps (ROC) from 1952 until 1980, when it was relocated to Lansdown near Bath. Co-located with the ROC was Headquarters Southern Sector United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation, responsible for the now-defunct four-minute warning in the event of nuclear attack during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. The site was adjacent to Basil Hill Barracks, the headquarters of No. 2 Signal Brigade, HMS Royal Arthur and the Royal Naval Stores Depot (RNSD) Copenacre.

Closure

The RAF station was closed in 2000. The Defence Communication Services Agency (DCSA) took responsibility for the sites, subsequently reorganising into the

Information Systems & Services Information Systems & Services (ISS) was a cluster within Strategic Command Top Level Budget of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. ISS was replaced by Defence Digital in 2019. History ISS was created from the former Defence Communica ...

cluster in 2008.

Manor house

The

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal mea ...

known as Rudloe Manor is adjacent to the northern outpost of the site, north of the A4 road at . The house dates from the 13th century and was rebuilt c.1685. It was designated as

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in 1985 along with a 12th century Tithe Barn to the south-west and 17th century entrance way, both Grade II listed. In 2021, Rudloe Manor was sold into private ownership and restoration work was undertaken.

References

;Specific ;General *

External links

*
RAF Rudloe Manor (site 1)
photos taken in May 2009 Rudloe Manor Battle of Britain Corsham