Halnaker Hill Radio Direction Finding Station, 2011

These strange octagonal buildings stand in a cluster around on Halnaker Hill near Chichester, West Sussex and are often mistaken for pillboxes or gun emplacements.

Actually, there is some debate about their purpose: The N.M.R. states that they are searchlight emplacements but Tyrell's List, the definitive authority on defensive structures in Sussex holds that they are the remains of an H.F.D.F. (High Frequency Direction Finding) station. Personally I favour the latter theory, as there were several R.A.F. stations nearby (Goodwood, Tangmere and Merston) although there might have been a duality of purpose at some time.

At the outbreak of W.W.II the only method of remotely determining the position of aircraft was using towers such as these. The brick enclosures would have protected a 3 storey wooden tower containing a an aerial by which high-frequency radio signals were exchanged with aircraft to guide them to their bases. The aerials were capable of being rotated through 360 degrees by a 'steering wheel' housed in the cabin below.


A rather grainy pic of an RDF tower on Beachy Head, East Sussex from Tyrell's List.


Partially demolished tower


Detail of the tower base


A more complete tower base


Baffle/blast wall entrance


Inside


Drain in floor


Another of the tower bases


Remains of concrete hardstanding


This huge tank might have been a fuel supply for the generator.


This building is behind the huge tank and is capped with a flat reinforced concrete roof. My guess is that it was the engine/generator room. The interior was inaccessible.

The hill is also shared by a neolithic causewayed enclosure and the famous Halnaker windmill, a tower mill built in the 1740s which worked until it was struck by lightning in 1905. The derelict mill was the subject of Hillaire Belloc's poem Ha'nacker Mill, a metaphor for the decay of rural England at the time. It was restored without its machinery in 1934 by Neve's, the Heathfield millwrights as a memorial to the wife of Sir William Bird, M.P. for Chichester. Further repair works were done in 1954 and 2004. It is possible that the mill also served as an observation post during WWII.


Windmill and tower base


Halnaker Mill


Looking up inside the mill. No machinery here, only the windshaft remains.


Chichester Cathedral in the distance. Spot the Rolls Royce Factory and the 'plane coming in to land at Goodwood.

Thanks for reading,

A.

Love the shot of the tower base and windmill

Aha - there's a tower base like this at Hawkinge which I visited earlier this month with Newage and Fluff. I knew it was for DF but thought it might have been connected to the AA site next to it (radar laid AA guns etc).
Interesting stuff
GDZ
PS. Belloc was a nutter. My grandmother knew him personally, and was always telling me this as a young boy. A genius mind, but still a nutter.

Very unusual, not seen this before. Nice one, Thanks.

Very interesting. I've never been comfortable with the Halnaker sites being listed as pillboxes or AA sites but left them alone as there was nothing else to type them as. Now there is I'll link to this post in the placemarks.

The octagonal brick structures remind me of a site near Pett which I'd assumed was a WWII searchlight emplacement, but which I found on the Pastscape website to be a 1950's VHF Fixer Station. There were two brick emplacements and a control building - a bit like here. Here's the link
http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.asp...l&criteria=ROTOR&rational=q&recordsperpage=60

interesting mate

There's another at Ventnor which may have been modified into a makeshift defensive position. (DoB S0012131)

Nice report.A thought on the tank.the rounded end suggests to me a compressed air tank rather than fuel