New lease of life for pioneering radio site

The original 5XX stone is still visible above the entrance

The owner of the home of the first national radio transmitter in the world said he is determined to give it a new lease of life.

The 5XX building on Borough Hill in Daventry, Northamptonshire, celebrates the centenary of its opening on Sunday.

The site went on to broadcast the BBC World Service for sixty years before being closed by the BBC in 1992.

John Silk bought the 5XX building, named after its transmitter callsign, in 2018 after "admiring it from afar" and is converting it into a base for his business, Juice Sound and Light.

The 5XX transmission building contained what was then the most advanced and highest-power transmitter in the world.

After the BBC moved out in the nineties, it was left to decay until Mr Silk was offered the chance to buy it.

"It's a hundred-year-old building and it was left derelict to rot," he said.

"When we came in, it was a scene from a Halloween movie with cobwebs hanging everywhere and, internally, ivy growing down the walls and the roof was collapsing."

The 5XX building was the world's first purpose-built national radio transmission station

Renovating the building was clearly going to be a long and expensive task, but Mr Silk was determined to get started.

"I've admired the building from afar for about 18 years prior to making the offer and it was always one of those places that intrigued me," he said.

Part of the 5XX building housed generator equipment in 1925

There are a few signs of its historic role in the past, including a travelling crane that was installed in 1925 to lift generator machines.

However, the iconic cathedral windows that once bathed the machinery in light had been bricked over.

John Silk is gradually renovating this unusual building, complete with nuclear bunker

A particularly quirky part of the structure is a reinforced nuclear bunker.

Mr Silk said: "If nuclear war broke out, there was to be four persons placed in this bunker, and they would survive the shocks.

"They had supplies and services here for 28 days and, after that, they would open the blast doors and walk out to what was left."

A telephone was provided in the nuclear bunker for instant communication with London

Mr Silk said he has spent about £330,000 on the building and there is still a lot of work to do, including the installation of offices and a small flat.

He wants to ensure the building "maintains its quality for at least the rest of my lifetime, but hopefully for another hundred years".