POW & WWII - St Erth

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ST ERTH RADIO SECURITY SERVICE STATION

St Erth played a major role in spying on the enemy through listening in to messages, pinpointing where they were coming from and reporting back to Hut 6 at Bletchley.  There is an interesting slideshow, also by Phil Hadley, of the St Erth RSS Station with accompanying WWII music which can be viewed here.  

Below is a photograph of the operators, courtesy of Mike Griffiths whose father was an operator at St Erth, taken in March 1946 outside the station.  Mike has carried out a great deal of research on this and given talks in St Erth which were extremely interesting and informative.  He has put pen to paper to produce a book entitled Listening to the Enemy documenting the history of St Erth Radio Station and its link with Hut 6 at Bletchley, an excellent and fascinating read with with photographs and other detailed illustrations.

In addition Mike has kindly supplied all of the following data below which is very much appreciated.  

St Erth Radio Station was Ultra Secret and an important part of a network of sites scattered across the UK. Its main role was to intercept and listen to the radio messages of the Abwehr  (the German Secret Service). These radio signals were sent, using the Enigma machine, in a 5 letter coded format. The intercepted codes were telegraphed to Arkley Hall, sorted then on to Bletchley Park  (the Government Code and Cypher School), for decryption.

The main Radio Station site was situated about a mile out of the village at the ‘top of the hill’.  Preliminary building work began in 1938 and by 1939 radio operators and other technical staff started arriving from around the country.  As the war effort grew, a second site was established at Mably Farm near Townsend.  It consisted of a 6m dia. steel ‘tank’ that was buried underground to avoid aerial detection.

The station was run initially by the Post Office for MI8 but early in the war MI6 took over and an umbrella organisation called the Radio Security Service (RSS) ran the station at the two sites until the end of hostilities. Over a 100 people worked around the clock throughout the war.

Mike has also donated data regarding the German Secret Service and the German and Italian Navy. Please use the linked text above to open the pdf files.

If you would like further information Mike Griffiths would be happy to be contacted using this email link.  

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HOME GUARD

The photograph below is Compliments of Suezan freepages rootsweb


They are (left to right)

Top Row
Jim Hart, Jack Hart, W Harris, H Nance, H Matthews, R Eddy, C Pellow, M Hancock, E P Lashbrook, W Matthews

Middle Row
H Nicholas, G O Taylor, M Thomas, S Bond, D Lugg, H Taylor, I Eckers, E Harris, A Johns

Front Row
S Lugg, W Ryan, W Warren, WF Bew, F Bunn, E Jenkin, C Dodd, I Stone, L Treglown, L Oates, J Heather

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SPITFIRE COLLISION OVER ST ERTH

Contributed with kind permission

People in story:  EDNA HOCKING
Location of story:  ST ERTH, CORNWALL
Background to story:  Civilian
Article ID:  A7069241
Contributed on:  18 November 2005

This story has been submitted to the website by BBC CSV Producer Nina Davey on behalf of the author Edna Hocking. The author understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1941/42 I lived on Tregethas Farm, St Erth. At 10.30 one night we heard the collision of two planes. Two Spitfires had crashed and fallen into the field of the next farm called Frythens. I've no idea how this crash occurred. Both pilots were killed and their bodies put in the barn overnight. It was awful and the police were out in the dark looking for parts of the bodies.

The next day a Lancaster Bomber dropped on one of the hedges of our field. I've no idea how this happened either, fortunately the pilot wasn't killed. I remember they had a pigeon on board in case they had to send a message back to base.

We had Prison of War Camps at St Erth with Italians and Germans and they worked on the farms around. One of them is still here, he never went back or married. he's called John the German. All the POWs were very nice, Rudi Mott was one of them, he was German. He bought a farm with daffodils and chickens and lives at Crowan, Praze he turned the old railway station into a bungalow.

Correction:  Rudi's surname was Mock not Mott as transcribed above, his interesting autobiograph is entitled A Cornish Rhapsody: From a Penny Halfpenny an Hour to a Fortune.