anyone got any idea what these are...

Folks,

if you have a search on posts i've made almost all of them concern facilities within about a 5 square mile box around christchurch UK, i've had this place brought to my attention by a friend of mine who cycles a lot, we both visited it a week or so ago.

google earth lat/long 50,45,31.83 1,47,50.99

live maps:
maps.live.com...

(live maps only seems to work under IE)


there are 3 structures, a large rectangular solid concrete structure, a large round concrete structure a bit like a gas holder, and a site a short distance away with 2 masts, ancillary communications equipment and generators.

The rectangular structure with one small doorway on an attached box structure, it sits about 10-15' proud of the ground and its easy to climb up and walk around on top of it. in the last 12 months it's sprouted a few green 'vent' structures too. it is not guarded, not fenced, it is not sign posted, has no 'in emergency contact...' info and it does not appear to have any pipework or cables running to it.

the round structure has nothing attached to it at all, no doors, no pipes, no cables. however if you look slightly to the left between that structure and the mast site you will see a feature on the ground which is largely devoid of plants, of approximately the same size, suggesting that perhaps at one time there was another similar structure.

the mast site seems to have one mast with lots of ordinary mobile phone equipment attached to it, and in the fenced compound at the base you can clearly see equipment containers with emergency contact stickers for vodafone, 02 and tmobile. This mast has one small generator set attached to it for, i guess, emergency backup. The other mast however has no mobile phone equipment on it and the equipment at the base is plain grey with no info on it, and 2 larger generators. the equipment on the tower is an assortment of backfire, omni, and parabolic antennae. all cables from this tower go into huts on the ground and do not appear again. with the mobile companies stuff you can clearly see where it heads off towards civilisation as the trench the cables are buried in is constantly being dug up!

There are vans tending all 3 sites regularly, the phone company vehicles stand out, but the vans that tend all the rest of the stuff are always plain white. my friend has approached the workmen twice before and was met by the answer 'maintenance' both times when he asked what they were doing. They do not wear company branded clothing. both times he has spoken to them they have been parked around the north side of the rectangular structure and the steel door has been unlocked and slightly ajar, but never open, and both men do not go in at the same time.

my question is, what is this stuff!

post continues...

Continued...

Popular local belief puts them as being 2 reservoirs, and a BT tower (although their is nothing on the compound the mast is in to suggest BT). I am curious about this for 2 reasons, 1) wessex water put emergency contact details on all their installations, as do bournemouth/west hants water. 2) I have a friend who works for wessex water, and my mother inlaw works for BWHW and both say that those structures are not theirs... so who's are they!

They are all located in an area locally known as St Catherines Hill, and offically known as Town Common, which is an SSSI.

It is known that both structures were built in the 50's with the large rectangular place built first, followed by the round one some years later. the tower was also put up in the 50's but taken down in the mid 60's and not replaced untill the 80's

Christchurch was a military town for a long time, with bases all over the place from WWII and the coldwar, a number of airfields, a top secret radar installation and a specialist vehicle branch of the royal engineers (who only left in the 90's) I wonder (and this is pure speculation here) whether as it doesn't appear to belong to any of the local utility companies it belongs to the MOD who have it on care and maintenance. Incidentally, from the outside at least, it appears to be somewhat similar in construction to the uniter hardened comms bunkers.

your thoughts??

I've tried very hard to get an answer from official sources, both the local, and county councils have simply said that they are 'utilities' but will not further elaborate.

Why the secrecy? if they are simply utilities to the public why not say so? if the sites are that sensitive why is there no fence and no security (except around the mast)

They could be anything and nothing,(like the local council says, utility buildings) although the best place to hide something is in plain sight.
Have a walk around taking photos and see what responce you get from the white van men.

I agree with the previous post...the best way to be unobvious is to be obvious....

if you live around the area and you are bothered about it, if I were you, I would observe the comings and goings out of these facilities and observe.

Observe the type of vehicles and people coming in and out.
Observe the level of security...what do the signs say (if any)

Try walking round blatently with a camera and see if anyone stops and questions you....

I wouldn't say i was bothered - just curious, and i don't doubt that they are really anything other than a utility, but who's utility?

and why do all the local utility companies deny they are anything to do with them?

my friend who brought these to my attention has said that their is never more than 2 vehicles with 2 occupants each in them, they always operate a 1 in 1 out system, where one chap remains outside the structure and one goes inside out of the pair.

there are no signs at all, the vehicles are always white transit type vehicles although aparently once there was a plain white landrover discovery van there too.

My friend has blatantly taken lots of mobile phone pictures of the places (which i've seen but don't have access to post) and the only people who ever got upset were vodafone engineers in a vodafone marked 4x4!

I just find it odd that no-one seems to be able to say "Oh, thats just an xxxyyyy owned by xxxxyyyy company"

i've got another line of enquiry to check out which has come from reading the sub-brit website...

I'll have access to information as to what they are or at least function as. I'll not say how as my method has been the subject of pulicity in the last year. I won't break the law nor will i compromise anyone or thing, JFTR!

The one thing i though it may be when you mentioned voda, ex MOD installations etc was a DR site for voda, very possible, very little maintainance yet accessible! Should a physical switch be required, though if it's anything like our's my DBA sits right next to me monitoring around 60 "boxes" with 120 plus app's ! if the DC fails or backouts are invoked, over we go with the press of a key. That may explain the mast and the green vents also!

It looks like one of the white vans with the passenger door open in back of the rectangular building.

It appears that this google earth image is two images taken at different times. I was panning around the area and when I came back to the big building the image was different showing a van parked in back with the passenger door open and one of the back doors. I panned around again and the van was gone however there was a van now showing next to the antenna towers. I have not used google earth that much but i have not had this happen before.

reply to post by wsamplet


It happens quite a lot. more often with live maps.

reply to post by evo1981


Ok, i don't want to compromise you. but could you U2U me with a little more information.

Could you explain your acronyms for the good of the board as I do not recognise them.

Thanks!

I had a "look" they are in fact resevoirs! or should i say resevoir complex. SSE of your original image by about 250 yrds stands what i believe was/is also part of the complex, these tend to be known as BGI's Below ground installations. The
large area of spoilt ground to the left is earthworks (engineering), im guessing from the constrcution of the res. The masts in the north of the image are just that, I can't say exactly what they carry, because I can't find out.

In my previous post I referred to DR's Distaster Recovery Sites for IS, DC's Data Centres. It may sound out there but you'd be suprised who will flog their assets to companys such as Voda etc for them to be used as the aformentioned.

What i do find intresting about that area, is that about 50ft to the right of that res, the next 500 West to East and for about 2 miles N - S aren't available for me to comment on. Which is very unusual, unless they have "something there" that i shouldn't be able to reference. I'd liken it to not being able to reference the likes of RAF Mildenhall/Lakenheath etc.

Sorry there is nothing in the location you were looking in but if your intrested
in have a looksie one day maybe you could try the area to the east of your spot and report back.

Also found out through some utilities contacts that unmanned res, AGI (above ground installations for gas etc). Will not be lablled as you'd imagine. They reason, they tend to be remote, as stated unamnned, very little security. Plenty of room for terrorism on home soil, what better way to weaken a naation by poisining everyone! Dump Cyan in the outlet tank and hey presto! Util's are one of the highest risk "area's" of commerce!

You make complete sense, thankyou. I still find it odd that all the local utilities are denying any knowledge of them though!

I think you may find that the reason for the lack of reference in the surrounding area is due to the presecence of military and defence related sites. one documented here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

but also several in the town of christchurch itself which used to be part of the specialist vehicles division royal engineers, one that used to be part of BAE but is now siemens defence and several random storage compounds in the middle of industrial areas. These may or may not be pertinent.

The area SSE of the reservoirs is in fact a very old quarry which now contains a shooting range. it was a small practice/recreational range for the MOD from about 1900 till 1968 when it came into private hands.

These particular things roused my curiosity because they seemed to officially not exsist - or at least I haven't managed to find anyone who knows who they actually belong to!

Town common has evidence on it of human occupation from the neolithic onwards!

I'm going to let this topic slide for now, but if i find a definitive answer i'll post it here - provided the owner doesn't swear me to secrecy!!

[edit on 15/11/07 by rat256]

[edit on 15/11/07 by rat256]