History
The site was originally built for an experimental over-the-horizon radar station known as Cobra Mist.
The radar never worked satisfactorily and the project was scrapped in 1973. The site and buildings were taken over in 1975 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Communications Engineering Department (still better known by its previous name, the Diplomatic Wireless Service), who installed a 50-kW medium-wave broadcast transmitter. Following successful tests and the installation of further transmitters, from 1978 the site gradually took over responsibility for the BBC's medium-wave services to Europe which had been provided since the Second World War by an FCO transmitting station at Crowborough in Sussex. From September 1982, Orfordness handled all such BBC transmissions. In 1986, the BBC itself took over the running of the site from the FCO, although the latter retained ownership of the station.
In 1997, as part of the privatization of all transmitting stations in the UK used by the BBC, the station was bought by Merlin Communications International Ltd (usually known simply as Merlin), a company formed by former BBC engineers and frequency managers. In 2001, Merlin was acquired by VT Group plc (known as Vosper Thorneycroft until 2002) and renamed VT Merlin Communications, then just VT Communications. In 2010, VT Communications was bought by Babcock.
Read more about this topic: Orfordness Transmitting Station
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