A note on the history that inspired Under A Wartime Sky

Although Under a Wartime Sky is entirely fictional, it was inspired by real-life events, people and places, especially Bawdsey Manor itself.

My father was a keen dinghy sailor and as children we spent many anxious hours watching him from the shingle at Felixstowe Ferry. Across the river, we could see fairy-tale towers peeping enticingly above the pines, and when the tides were right we would pack buckets and spades and take the ferry over to the small sandy beach at Bawdsey Quay. But the Manor itself, at that time still in the hands of the Ministry of Defence, remained firmly out of bounds, with soldiers at the gatehouse and Keep Out signs posted all around the fences.

Several decades later, our friend Niels Toettcher was sailing on the River Deben when he spied a For Sale sign. The Ministry of Defence was selling Bawdsey Manor and all its grounds and cottages. He landed, visited the place and fell in love with it, and for the next twenty-five years he and his wife Ann lived and ran a successful English language school there. Of course we visited often and fell in love with it, too. How could you not? The mansion is remarkable in itself, but with the addition of its extraordinary military role, its masts (since taken down) and curious outbuildings, it is irresistible.

The history of Bawdsey Manor is well documented: William Cuthbert Quilter, a local landowner and MP, bought the land in 1873 to build a Victorian gothic ‘seaside home’. Over the next twenty years he added towers and facades in Flemish, Tudor/Jacobean, French chateau and Oriental styles to accommodate his growing family and lavish house parties. His wife, Lady Quilter, set about creating extensive formal gardens, a vast walled kitchen garden and most notably the Cliff Path, using an artificial rock called Pulhamite.

In 1936 Bawdsey Manor was bought by the Air Ministry. Sir Robert Watson-Watt and his small team of brilliant scientists moved from nearby Orford Ness, working in utmost secrecy and under great pressure to develop new radio direction finding technology before the feared outbreak of war. Stables and outbuildings were converted into workshops and the first receiver and transmitter towers were built.

The work of Watson-Watt and his team is widely credited with being a major factor in winning the Second World War, particularly in the Battle of Britain but also during the Blitz and in subsequent phases. Sadly, their inventions and the dedication of thousands of radar operators – many of them women – are now rarely celebrated, and are certainly far less widely recognised than the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. Radar later developed into microwave technology, which has thousands of applications in everyday life today, such as speed cameras and air traffic control, as well as in space.

When war broke out, the scientists were moved inland and RAF Bawdsey became the first of dozens of radar stations operating along the south and east coasts of Britain. It continued as an RAF base throughout the Cold War when Bloodhound missiles were sited on the cliffs.

All around East Anglia are the remnants of wartime airfields, none more chilling than the top-secret RAF Woodbridge (the official name for Sutton Heath), just a few miles inland from Bawdsey. Known as a ‘crash ’drome’, its specially wide runways were designed for use only by aircraft in trouble and it was fully equipped with extra-bright lighting, emergency medical facilities and heavy-lifting equipment to remove the wrecks. More than four thousand planes crash-landed on this airfield during the war, and many lives were saved.

Felixstowe, one of the most easterly towns in Britain, has always been on the front line of war. At its southern end, Landguard Fort – now overlooked by the giant cranes and gantries of one of the largest container ports in Europe – has its origins in the sixteenth century. The coast is ringed with Martello towers built to defend Britain against Napoleon.

During the First World War a flying boat squadron at Felixstowe played a critical role in tracking German U-boats and later became the first Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment for flying boats and seaplanes.

All of this history, plus my early childhood love of the place, made it the perfect setting for Under a Wartime Sky. I hope you agree.

Here are just some of the books, exhibitions and websites that have helped in my research:

Gwen Arnold, Radar Days: Wartime Memoir of a WAAF RDF Operator (Woodfield Publishing, 2000)

Jim Brown, Radar: How it All Began (Janus Publishing, 1996)

Robert Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World (Touchstone, 1998)

Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939–45 (Headline, 2004)

Ian Goult, Secret Location: A Witness to the Birth of Radar and its Postwar Influence (The History Press, 2010)

Phil Hadwen, John Smith, Ray Twidale, Peter White and Neil Wylie, Felixstowe from Old Photographs (The Lavenham Press, 1990)

Phil Hadwen, John Smith, Peter White and Neil Wylie, Felixstowe at War (The Lavenham Press, 2001)

Phil Hadwen, Ray Twidale, Peter White, Graham Henderson and John Smith, The Hamlet of Felixstowe Ferry, Pictures from the Past (The Lavenham Press, 1990)

Gordon Kinsey, Bawdsey: Birth of the Beam (Terence Dalton, 1983)

Colin Latham and Anne Stobbs, Radar: A Wartime Miracle (Sutton Publishing, 1997)

Virginia Nicholson, Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace 1939–1949 (Viking, 2011)

Robert Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory (Odhams Press, 1957)

RDF to Radar, a film made by the Telecommunications Research Establishment Film Unit in 1945/46. On DVD from Bawdsey Radar Trust.

Bawdsey Radar Trust runs the transmitter block museum: www.bawdseyradar.org.uk

Felixstowe Museum at Landguard Fort: www.felixstowe museum.org