Crowsley Park

Crowsley Park is a 160-acre (65 ha)[1] country estate in South Oxfordshire, central-southern England, owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

The BBC leases the estate to private tenants, operating its receiving station from a modern building erected for the purpose near the centre of the park.

Crowsley Park's history includes an association with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories.

Shortwave, mediumwave and longwave receivers were installed in a rudimentary building at Crowsley put up some distance from the main house.

In 1974,[7] the BBC's separate, and larger, receiving station at Tatsfield,[8][9] on the North Downs south of London, was closed and its functions merged with the facility at Crowsley.

As part of an engineering upgrade in the 1980s,[10] a number of satellite dishes were installed, joining the Beverage and rhombic aerials and curtain arrays already on the site.

[11] Additional rhombic aerials were erected to boost shortwave reception from the Middle East and North Africa, alongside those already used for signals from Europe and the Soviet Union, the latter having been the station's priority target during the Cold War.

There is a distant view of the house, through an ornamental avenue of trees, from the public road junction at the southwest corner of the park.

The three very large satellite dishes mentioned above are visible from the public road (Devil's Hill) that forms the northern boundary of the park.

Crowsley Park was used as a visual substitute for Jodrell Bank by the production team due to easier availability of the site.

While the BBC utilised the grounds the house itself was neglected and in an advanced state of decay, like many disused country homes at that time, large numbers of which became damaged beyond repair and were then demolished.

Unfortunately, the Victorian extension was too damaged with dry-rot to enable preservation and was demolished, leaving only sections of its ground floor wall and what became a "gazebo" tower.