RAF Stenigot is a former

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

radar station situated at Stenigot, near

Donington on Bain Donington on Bain is a village and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The village is approximately south-west from Louth and north from Horncastle, and is on the east bank of the River Bain, and in the Linco ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

Second World War

It was built in 1938 by Blaw-Knox as part of the

Chain Home Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the off ...

early-warning radar An early-warning radar is any radar system used primarily for the long-range detection of its targets, i.e., allowing defences to be alerted as ''early'' as possible before the intruder reaches its target, giving the air defences the maximum t ...

network. Initially, the site’s main feature was an octet of aerial towers. These were supported by some low-lying buildings.

Post war

The station was upgraded in 1959 to GEE H communications relay site as part of the

ACE High Allied Command Europe Highband, better known as ACE High, was a fixed service NATO radiocommunication and early warning system dating back to 1956. After extensive testing ACE High was accepted by NATO to become operational in 1964/1965. The fr ...

programme, which involved adding four

tropospheric scatter Tropospheric scatter, also known as troposcatter, is a method of communicating with microwave radio signals over considerable distances – often up to and further depending on frequency of operation, equipment type, terrain, and climate facto ...

dishes. The site was decommissioned in the late 1980s and was mostly demolished by 1996.

Current use

The

radar tower A radar tower is a tower whose function is to support a radar facility, usually a local airport surveillance radar, and hence often at or in the vicinity of an airport or a military air base. In addition, radar towers are used for the installatio ...

is a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

structure because it is the best preserved and most complete Chain Home transmitter tower surviving in its original location in the British Isles. The site is still in use by the RAF Aerial Erector School for selection tests for possible recruits.

Demolition of three radar dishes (October 2018)

Three of four dishes on site were scrapped in the winter of 2018. A local construction firm admitted to scrapping three of the four dishes, the legality of this is disputed. The first dish was removed from its supports sometime before 14 October, with two more dishes being felled over the following days. The fourth and last remaining dish was removed in mid to end–November 2020.

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