Adastral Park

Adastral Park is a science campus based on part of the old Royal Air Force Station at Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich in the English county of Suffolk.

Martlesham Heath was chosen as the site for a research facility because the surrounding countryside was relatively flat and therefore ideal for testing the radio-based communication systems in vogue at the time.

After the Post Office was split apart and prior to British Telecom's privatisation in the early 1980s, the research concentrated on telecommunications.

The change to the current name occurred in the late 1990s with the aim of turning the site into a high-technology business park, no longer exclusively for the use of BT.

In March 2001, University College London, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, chose Adastral Park to set up the first-ever postgraduate research and teaching centre on an industrial campus, which was housed there until 2009.

[citation needed] In 2006, Suffolk Coastal District Council (SCDC) rejected a planning application for 120 log cabins on a site next to Waldringfield Road.