Construction of the Burghead Transmitting Station took place between 1934 and 1936. During this period, Thomas Heyes was working as a self-employed electrician in North West England. Thomas lived in Rainhill, now part of Merseyside and site of the famous locomotive trials in 1829.
He came to be employed on the installation of the electrical systems at Burghead, travelling from his home to work on the site at Clarkly Hill and staying in the village.
Thomas was my paternal grandfather and these photos, sadly unannotated, are from our family archive. The images of the original T1 transmitter provided by Martin Briscoe (see Burghead index page) are likely to have captured some of the installation work Thomas was involved in.
Issue 680 of the Radio Times (link below) includes an article by Sir Noel Ashbridge - BBC Chief Engineer, describing the decision to build the station at Burghead and includes an additional photo of the front aspect of the site.
The development of the new station reportedly caused considerable excitement in the area, as a 2011 article in the The Northern Scot describes (see link below).
The strategic importance of the station in providing broadcast coverage to this part of Scotland can perhaps be appreciated by the fact that at the start of the Second World War, the Luftwaffe conducted 'aerial reconnaisance' (no pun intended!) over the site (see link below).
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