Aircrew training, wireless reception and secret communications brought different kinds of wartime activity to the countryside around Great Brickhill. These accounts explain the roles of the nearby sites and provide routes into the village’s existing military history.
Military Connections in the Surrounding Area
Military Connections in the Surrounding Area
Discover how the countryside around Great Brickhill became a landscape of aircrew training, codebreaking and secret wireless communications. This overview connects RAF Wing, Bletchley Park, Whaddon Hall and RAF Stoke Hammond with the village’s own stories of service, local defence and remembrance.
RAF Wing
RAF Wing and No 26 Operational Training Unit
Explore the airfield’s training role, its memorial and Operation Exodus, when liberated prisoners of war returned through Wing. The account includes memorial-board material and a local interview.
Whaddon Hall
Whaddon Hall and the Secret Communications Network
Whaddon Hall’s headquarters and technical work, the Windy Ridge radio station and the aerial installations at Briar Plantation each had a part in the communications network. The account explains their different functions and locations.
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park — an essay by David Marlow
David’s essay follows visits to Bletchley Park, its preservation and the Great Brickhill connections recorded in the article. It brings together the history of the site with personal recollections and attributed family testimony.
RAF Stoke Hammond
RAF Stoke Hammond was a wireless receiving and telecommunications station on Dorcas Lane. Built in 1942, it entered service in March 1943. Its role centred on radio communications rather than operational flying.
Buckinghamshire’s Historic Environment Record identifies the wartime station as 372 Wireless Unit, within No. 26 Signals Group. The record describes its reception of secret coded traffic associated with Bletchley Park, including messages from intelligence and resistance organisations.
Aerial photographs show how the station occupied the landscape: groups of technical and accommodation buildings stood among extensive fields of radio masts. The masts and receiving equipment were essential parts of a working communications system.
The station continued into the Cold War. Its receiving facilities were enlarged and the arrangement of buildings and aerials changed as the network developed. It closed in 1973. The heritage record traces the later removal of the masts and the survival of parts of the site.
RAF Stoke Hammond — Buckinghamshire Heritage Portal
Further reading
Bletchley Park’s Secret Sisters
John A. Taylor’s book explores the surrounding wartime sites and communications network. The existing GBHP book reference provides a guide to the subjects covered.