Late in 1963 the ITA decided that the Border Television coverage of the Isle of Man should be extended by the construction of a relay station to serve the south-eastern part of the island and in particular the important town of Douglas. Other parts of the island, and indeed certain parts of the Douglas area itself, already received a reasonable service from the ITA stations at Winter Hill, Caldbeck and Black Mountain near Belfast.
The site selected for the Isle of Man station was Richmond Hill, 542 ft above sea level and about three miles from the centre of Douglas. This site, whilst giving the desired coverage, also afforded reliable direct reception of the Border ITV programmes transmitted from Caldbeck on Channel 11, which Richmond Hill rebroadcasted on Channel 8. Transmissions from Richmond Hill were also received on the mainland in Whitehaven and the Cumberland coastal area to the south. The 200 ft tower originally broadcast the first ITV programmes to the London area from Croydon. Before being re-erected the tower was strengthened so as to be able to carry a top-mounted UHF transmitting aerial as Richmond Hill was scheduled to be a UHF main station. It would have been site number 127, transmitting on ch's 30/34/48/52 at 20 kW, had this Stockholm allocation been used.
405-line Border ITV on channel 8 entered service on 26-Mar-1965. Closed July 1983. Richmond Hill also transmitted Manx Radio on 96.9 MHz from around 1978 to March 1988, when the transmitter was relocated to the BBC Douglas site. |
