Site Records

Site Name: Trimingham 'QLE' CEW R1 Rotor Radar Station

Sub Brit visit to RAF Trimingham on 7th June 2005

The guardhouse is still in RAF use and access to the R1 bunker has been retained. The stairwell is used a as recreation room with a pool table and the first section of the sloping entrance tunnel has been utilised as a locker room. A short distance along the tunnel a wall has been built across the passage with a wooden door. Beyond this the bunker is abandoned and unlit. At the end of the tunnel there is a transformer recess on the left and the cable entry point on the right. The passage then does a dog leg left and right into the main east - west spine corridor, there were originally blast doors at this point but these have now been removed. Some section of wooden flooring along the corridor have been removed and replaced with temporary plywood panels and the floor is largely solid with no under floor cableways and is safe to walk on.

Many of the original partition walls have now been removed leaving two rooms on the left and ten rooms on the right. All the original teak secondary flooring has been removed from all the rooms on the left side leaving a three drop down to floor level from the corridor. The rooms has been completely stripped apart from the brick supports for the now removed wooden floor and ventilation trunking. The first entrance on the left led to the workshop and on to the radar office, the second entrance let to the Track Telling Room with a door back into the Radar Office. To the right of this entrance was the Central Filter Plot Room with a wooden staircase into a lower level room known as the 'udder'. This was designed for the Kelvin Hughes display equipment and you can clearly see the two sets of AC connectors which supplied filtered/cooled air and removed 'dirty' hot air. These two sets of trunking would have serviced the two KH projection units, these would have had a large swivel mirror between them allowing either to be used to project a GSM to the projection table above and allow in-line servicing. This room would have also contained a small darkroom and film store.

Photo: The unused pit for the Kelvin Hughes photographic display unit. While the bunker was in use the pit was floored over and the room was used for the Combined Filter Plot.
Photo by Nick Catford

The pit is dry and the wooden stairs are safe to use. The CFP had its own doorway into the corridor. The fourth doorway would have led to the GPO apparatus room and the final doorway led to the air conditioning plant room; this has been stripped of most of its plant, only part of the air handling system and a bank of filters remain in place. There was no secondary floor in this room with steps down from the corridor.

On the right the first doorway led to the intercept cabin and the second to the technical officers office; the wall between these two rooms has been removed. The next rooms are in the following order: store, RAF lavatory, Officers lavatory, WRAF rest room leading into the WRAF lavatory. There is a hatch from the WRAF rest room into the small kitchen. Beyond the kitchen is the RAF rest room with another hatch into the kitchen. The two remaining rooms are for electrical switchgear and then the radar machinery room.

Beyond the plant room the corridors dog legs right and left site of a second pair of blast doors past the air conditioning coolers (only trunking remains) and gas filtration plant (nothing remains) on the left. Opposite the filtration plant was the pump room (pumps removed) and sump. The tunnel then ends in a blank wall which would have contained a metal staircase of several flights leading to the emergency exit, this has been filled with rubble and soil and there is no evidence of it on the surface.

Trimingham is located on Beacon Hill on the North Norfolk Coast between Cromer and Mundesley. The site originally consisted of 10 acres on both sides of Mundesley Road but now only the southern part of the site is occupied by the RAF. Three radar plinth and two gantry bases and a frequency changer building all survives on the opposite (seaward) side of the road. There is also a large single storey brick building, this was the Type 80 Mk1 modulator building; there are also the bases of several WW2 huts. In recent years this has been put to farm use and the whole site has recently been securely refenced. The standby generator was located on the domestic camp which has now been completely cleared.

Externally a rest room, lounge and vestibule are located in a new portacabin to the south west of the guardroom. The site remains numerous metal containers for the once mobile radar head. There are also a number of small pillboxes made of sewer pipes around perimeter of the site.

Sources:

RCHME Survey report on RAF Trimingham (1998) by Wayne Cocroft
PRO Files AIR 29/167 & 168
PRO Files AIR 2/10984 August 1952 listing equipment changes when Type 80 installed
PRO Files AIR 8/2032 1 January 1954
RAF Air Defence Radar Museum, Neatishead
Bob Jenner
Keith Ward

Click here for further pictures of RAF Trimingham

Home Page

© 1998 - 2006 Subterranea Britannica