T H E   D E R E L I C T   M I S C E L L A N Y

What: Underground Radio/Sabotage Station
Where: Shipley, West Sussex
Built: 1942
Architect: Unknown
Abandoned: 1944
Listed: No
Visited: 2005, 2011
Last Known Condition: Collapsed
Page Updated: March 2014

In a small wood somewhere in Southern England is a concrete lined pit with a round tunnel leading off of it. Most passersby mistake it for a drainage system, but careful research reveals that it is actually much more interesting. Squeeze into the tunnel and you will see that it runs for about sixteen feet before it opens out into a set of three corrugated steel vaulted rooms with a shaft in the end chamber that once led to the surface. It is clearly of Second World War origin, but is too isolated and too well-hidden to be a straightforward air-raid shelter.

In fact this was once part of a top-secret Special Duties Organisation: a network of spies and communications operatives recruited from the civilian population whose job was to spy on invading forces during a successful Nazi occupation of Great Britain. If the Germans did invade, the SD0's work would begin straight away, reporting on troop movements and enemy activity. The work would be dangerous and life expectancy low: if caught, operatives could expect to be arrested, tortured and shot. The sophisticated process of intelligence gathering would begin with spies, often farm labourers, doctors, postmen, midwives, vicars or other people whose jobs allowed movement without attracting suspicion. These spies would observe enemy activity, write short, coded reports, and leave them in 'dead letter boxes' to be collected by local radio operators. The identity of the spies would be kept secret from the radio operators and vice-versa to ensure maximum secrecy and avoid infiltration by hostile agents.

After a radio operator had picked up a message, they would use their hidden radio set (termed an Out Station) to transmit the information to the nearest Control, In or Zero Station which would then relay the message to SDO HQ at Hannington Hall in Wiltshire. Shipley was one of these Zero Stations (so-called because station's code-name was always followed by the suffix 'zero'). Three trained ATS subalterns would maintain the station in readiness and the radio equipment was kept in order by The Royal Corps of Signals. When in use, there would be no transmitting schedules for the out-station operators to keep so the women would have to listen for inbound messages for long periods of time.

Fortunately, the Station and the secretive network of which it was part never saw their intended use: with the threat of invasion eliminated by the successful Normandy landings, the Special Duties Organisation was stood down in November 1944 and all of its secret hideouts were decommissioned.