Simon English
England Revisited

On an ash tree the road running from Claycoton to Lilbourne.

On the same Ash tree beside the road as 1971. Some of the drawing pins are still there although the larger ones with the fragments of cloth from a flag may only date from a visit in 1993.

The ash tree is much more encased in the hedge which is a great deal thicker and taller. Black thorn and elm, of which dead saplings stand nearby part of the cycle of grow, die and re-grow that is the cycle of life of these trees now that Dutch elm disease seems endemic. The small tree to the south west that stood on the other side of the road has gone presumably as, if it was an elm, it would have been part of the first generation of die back. The small animal shelter marked on older maps has gone too although back across the road the corrugated iron shelter (sheep cote?) still stands although both fields are now under plough. The field on the other side of the hedge to the ash tree is still under grass.

The dominant feature at this point until recently was the circle of tall radio masts to the south west. These had dominated the skyline all my life and had been a landmark for travellers on the new MI and the A5 Watling Street. In 1971 I had photographed myself at point 49 from the field so that the radio masts could be in the background. Their absence now was disorientating to the extent that I doubted that we had come to the right place.

I learn that they were a ring of twelve masts that made up what was the Rugby Radio Station two and a half miles away. These stood 820 feet tall (250 metres) and had been put up in 1927 by the GPO and originally used to transmit telegraph messages to the Commonwealth as part of the Imperial Wireless Chain. After the war their role was in transmitting messages to submerged submarines. By the time that the GPO was privatised and became BT most of the masts had become redundant and in June 2007 eight of the twelve were demolished by a series of controlled explosions. I gather that the last three did not fire and had to have their control wires replaced. The reason was that during the day rabbits had nibbled the wires. It is good to know that I am not the only person to have their communications systems snipped by rabbits, whether wild or domestic.

The remaining four masts transmitted the time signal but when BTs contract to supply this service ended in 2007 they too were demolished. Their presence has been replaced by a forest of smaller masts, much lower to the horizon, standing between the A5 and M1 serving new requirements with newer equipment.
Points 46, 47 & 49