RAF Rudloe Manor

RAF Rudloe Manor
Corsham, Wiltshire, England
Rudloe Manor Shown within Wiltshire
Coordinates	51°25′14.28″N 2°13′0.70″W / 51.4206333°N 2.2168611°W / 51.4206333; -2.2168611Coordinates: 51°25′14.28″N 2°13′0.70″W / 51.4206333°N 2.2168611°W / 51.4206333; -2.2168611
Site information
Owner	Private, Military
Open to the public	No
Condition	Standing
Site history
Built	1939 (1939)
In use	1939–2000 (2000)
Battles/wars	Battle of Britain No.10 Group Fighter Command, Europe December 1939 – May 1945

RAF Rudloe Manor, formerly RAF Box, was a Royal Air Force station located north-east of Bath, England, between the settlements of Box and Corsham, in Wiltshire. It was one of several military installations situated in the area and covered three dispersed sites.

The station was established on top of quarries from which Bath Stone had been extracted. In the 1930s some of the tunnels had been converted for use as a Central Ammunition Depot. The vast caverns had some 2,250,000 square feet (209,000 m²) of space, divided into many smaller chambers.

The station was established in Spring 1940 to act as headquarters for No. 10 Group RAF, whose area encompassed South West England and South Wales. No. 10 Group was disbanded in May 1945.

The operations room, responsible for directing RAF aircraft in the No. 10 Group area, was initially located in a block adjacent to the old manor. In 1940 it was relocated into the north end of an underground bunker in Browns Quarry. The operations room became disused in May 1945 when No. 10 Group was disbanded.

The Filter Room, responsible for filtering large quantities of intelligence on enemy activity before it was passed to the operations room, was located in the south end of the underground bunker in Browns Quarry and became operational in 1940. The filter room became disused in May 1945 when No. 10 Group was disbanded.Eileen Younghusband, who served in various filter rooms, recounted her experiences at Rudloe Manor in her 2011 memoir, "One Woman's War".

The members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force who manned the bunker were billeted at nearby Hartham Park.

Following the end of the Second World War, the wider site continued as both a communications hub and home of various administrative units. No.1 Signals Unit was established to manage all UK terrestrial communications infrastructure for the RAF. With the launch of the UK Satellite Communications System, Skynet, in the late 1960s, the site of Controller Defence Communications Network (CDCN) was established. A spacecraft operations centre was established by 1001 Signals Unit, the spacecraft operations organisation, on a small enclave within the site, known as Hawthorn.