UK Broadcast Transmission
Main indexMain GalleryFeaturesDSODesktop wallpaper
InfoSend in your photosFAQsMailing listsContact
The LibraryTeletextMHPTBSAstrohosts

THE TRANSMISSION GALLERY

Photos by Robert Whittaker

Kensal Town Greater London
  NGR: TQ245820 Site Height: 28m Structure Height: 120m
Analogue TV: BBC1: 56  BBC2: 49  ITV1: 52  Ch4: 67   
Digital TV:          
BBC Radio:          
     
Ind. National Radio:    
Ind. Local Radio:    
     
Digital Radio:          
Comments: Kensal Town is a relay of Crystal Palace
   

The Kensal Town relay is located on the roof of the Trellick Tower, which is a residential tower block just to the north of Notting Hill in West London.

Transmissions are from an array of log periodics, with four pointing roughly east and another two pointing roughly south. The RX antenna is a single log periodic on Crystal Palace.

Having worked in Holland Park I have noticed a number of proerties in that area which appear to be using the service from this relay.

The Trellick Tower has become something of an infamous landmark in London, gaining Grade II listed status in 1998 as an example of brutalist style 1960s concrete architecture. It was designed by architect Erno Goldfinger who also designed the Trellick Tower's non-identical twin, the Balfron Tower in East London, on top of which is located the Poplar TV relay.

This was a rather problematic site to photograph, mainly due to the difficulty of locating the relay. The published NGR puts the site in the middle of the road to the south of the tower. That coupled with the near impossibility of spotting the broadcast aerials on the top of a 100m building lead to one abortive visit and then a second attempt involving a lot of time wasted wandering around the vicinity trying to ascertain which building the relay was sited on. There also appeared to be nobody locally using the relay, something that normally helps point the way quite well.

The first clue came with the discovery of the RBL antenna which can be best spotted from the north side of the building. Then followed a lot of head scratching as the TX antennas are not visible from street level anywhere around the building, except a single location near the railway line, quite a long way to the south east of the tower. Even then due to the height of the tower it was not certain that gold had been struck until the photos could be examined properly at home later that evening. It was only then that the familiar ruggedised log periodic array was spotted in amongst all the clutter on top of the tower.

Looking north west - only location where TX antennas are visible!

Kensal Town coverage area map | More about Trellick Tower from Wikipedia | Poplar

Back to TX Gallery index | TX main index