Chris Morshead (right) is one of our Research Volunteers who actually came across Blakehill Farm by pure chance in 2020.

 

Having served in the Royal Navy for almost 30 years, his background is in airborne Radar, Communications and Navigation Systems Engineering, and his main interest was adding to our knowledge of the Cold War period, including use of the site by the Central Flying School.

 

Initially looking to provide more information on a particular Radar which had been located at the site, he was also fascinated by the links to GCHQ and it was not long before he discovered a wealth of evidence relating to the sort of Classified work likely to have been carried out here by GCHQ and other organisations – often based on once Secret reports long since released by the US Government and now freely available via the Internet.

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Chris said “Sadly, I never worked at Blakehill or on this sort of equipment, nor was I ever involved with GCHQ. In a way that’s good as I’d be sworn to secrecy! However, as an Avionics Engineer, it has proved relatively easy to figure out the sort of work that likely took place here based on what we have have found on the site and on what we now know the US and others were up to at the same time. Maybe, one day, we will get some official confirmation from the UK Government – and correction if we have got some bits wrong. Until then, we can only make some educated guesses based on basic Engineering techniques and what unclassified evidence we have found to date!”

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From a personal level I cannot thank Chris enough for his input into the project.

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