Telham Outstation

The wireless was sited in an underground base within Ring Wood, west of the present Beauport Park Golf Course.

An account in a 1947 newspaper report provides rare details about the construction of this site. Mr D W Rawlence, the estate agent was walking with the estate bailiff in the woods behind the Telham petrol station in 1942 when they came across a group of Canadian soldiers digging a deep hole. Rawlence said, “I asked them what they were doing and they said they did not know, except they were digging a hole. I pointed out that I had not received a commandeering notice.” He query resulted in a meeting with an officer at 5pm that day, when he was told the matter was secret and he should ask no questions. He was reassured that when the work was finished, he would have no cause to complain. The troops continued to work on the project for two months. When they left, there was almost nothing to see, other than a few marks in the newly laid turf. 

It was accessed again in 1947, the hatch having been replaced by oak boards across the six foot deep shaft, buried under two feet of soil. At the base of the shaft was a screen of oak boards, though it is unclear if this was part of the original structure or its decommissioning. Behind was a spring loaded wooden door that opened inwards. Inside was a bench, with a folding table fixed to the wall. The walls were covered with boards and studding. One section proved to be loose and was a flap door leading to the escape tunnel. In the surface they noticed a piece of wire sticking out of a nearby tree and realised there was an aerial, buried beneath putty pressed into a notch in the bark. 

Positioned on the edge of the wood, near to a footpath, the Station has, over the following years, gradually collapsed and silted up. A nearby Maple tree still has the aerial cable running up its trunk.

The site was excavated in the 1990s to ascertain the method of construction employed. The ceiling and the walls were all made up of corrugated iron and timber, apart from two small sections where bricks were used for walls. After removing the collapsed ceiling it was discovered that the main chamber had a concrete pit at its base. This measures six feet long, four feet wide and one and a half feet deep. This would no doubt have had the wireless set sitting on a table, along with a chair for the operator positioned inside of it. The pit had its own drainage gully and was dug deep enough for a person to stand upright in the hideout, in fact this is the only area in the hideout where this was possible. Two emergency exit tunnels ran out of the main chamber, the longest being 40 feet long. Both terminated in an earth covered wooden hatch.

Although still accessible, the hideout is in a very dangerous and unstable condition and should not be entered. Much of the corrugated sheet and timber lining has fallen away or rotted, especially from the roof of the chamber and the tunnels leaving unsupported soil held together by roots. The whole network of tunnels could collapse at any time.