Winter Hill

Winter Hill lies on the summit of Rivington Moor which overlooks the town of Horwich.  Winter Hill is 1250ft above sea level, on a clear day you can see the Isle of Man, Blackpool and the Fylde Coast, Welsh mountains and the Lake District.  

Winter Hill has seen several plane crashes and one disastrous plane crash in 1958 when 35 people were killed.

At the summit of Winter hill a Scotch traveller called George Henderson was robbed and murdered on November 9th 1838 as he made his way over the hill.  A memorial was erected and is now known as 'Scotsmans Stump'. 

The story of the Winter Hill Transmitter and Mast

Winter Hill, located 1250ft above sea level, is fine site to locate the Television Transmitters that serve the whole of the North West.

Construction began in September 1955 and the station went into service on May 3rd 1956.  Originally the aerial was an 850ft high pylon tower. (similar to those seen in the countryside which carries electricity cables) This gave television coverage to the whole of Lancashire and Cheshire and parts of Derbyshire, Staffordshire and North Wales.

In 1966 coverage of the stations was improved when the new higher mast was built.  The new mast is 1015ft high!  The new mast was built to accommodate the new UHF Colour Television transmissions which started in 1969.

The station itself is divided into two separate buildings, one is the BBC station and the other is the ITV station. On 23rd September 1967 the stations were opened up to the public during an Open day where guided tours around the stations were conducted and for the first time, visitors were able to see themselves in on television monitors in Colour!

This was how the inside of the ITV station was set out:

Control Room
This is the nerve centre of the transmitting station. The vision and sound signals pass through the control room and are closely monitored for faults before transmission and checked again as they leave the building en route for the transmitting aerials on the mast.

Transmitter Hall and control room in 1967

Transmitter Hall
There were four identical transmitters in the transmitter hall, arranged in identical pairs of one sound transmitter and one vision transmitter. In the event of a failure, the stand-by transmitters can be brought into service very quickly and transmissions continued with the shortest possible interruption of programmes.

Basement
In the basement is housed the 'Aerial Switching Frame' which enables the aerial system to be connected to either pair of transmitters.

Outside Broadcast Room
Outside broadcasts can be fed into the main network from Winter Hill.

Post Office Room
The Post Office (now B.T.) was responsible for the permanent network which links the studios to the transmitters.

Mast
The mast supporting the transmitter aerials is 1015ft high, and up to 650ft is constructed of a 9ft diameter steel tube erected in sections. The cylinder, weighing about 240 tons, stands on a 10ft high reinforced concrete super-structure. Inside this section is a lift which takes engineers up to the upper part of the mast. A triangular lattice construction above this supports the aerials, which are protected from the elements by an enclosing fibre glass cylinder. There are fifteen mast stays and nine anchor blocks. About 950 cubic yards of concrete were used.

The aerial itself is vastly more complex than the type of aerial that we use at home to receive the transmissions.

In winter ice builds up on the mast and stays, this increases the weight of the mast structure.  A similar mast at Emily Moor in Yorkshire collapsed following build up of ice on the mast.  Now the mast at Winter Hill is closely monitored for wind speed and ice, when conditions reach a dangerous level, alarms are sounded and engineers working in the stations are evacuated to a stand-by control room situated further down the hill.

Today, state of the art transmitters provide the area with terrestrial digital television along with conventional analogue transmissions (eg BBC1, BBC2, ITV, CH4 and CH5). Many other communications transmitters, including those used for mobile phones are also sited on Winter Hill because of it's panoramic location.