North Winchester was a single channel TV relay station. When, in Jan 1993, Meridian launched the Thames Valley sub-region from Hannington, this suddenly gave many viewers living in the south of Hampshire the incorrect local news programme. For geographical reasons many residents in South Hants receive a better signal from Hannington than from the much nearer site at Rowridge.
To overcome this problem Meridian commissioned NTL to build three single channel relay stations. (Hatch Bottom, North Winchester, and Hythe) to carry the Meridian South sub-region from Rowridge.
Each station is located in the same direction as Hannington for each of the target service areas. Transmissions were horizontally polarised and within the existing analogue aerial grouping of Hannington, so, in theory, the viewers did not need to alter their receiving aerials, they simply retuned their ITV preset to the local relay in order to receive the correct news programmes. North Winchester originally transmitted on ch52 but was changed to ch56 ahead of Rowridge using ch52 for interim DTT mux 2.
The sub-region closed in 2008 but the relays remained in service until DSO (March 2012). Some 18 months later, North Winchester appeared unchanged - indeed there was no visible difference since Mark's original visit.
Mark returned to the site in April 2014, and reports no sign of it, so at some point between August 2013 and April 2014 the mast has been dismantled and removed. |
