History
Arncliffe Wood is an unusual site. It formed a link in the 1951 Manchester to Kirk o'Shotts television route [link to feature]. There appear to be no archive photos available but the available information indicates the use of a very short tower (20 ft 6 in) which would have been of the same style as at the other sites. Tinshill and Pontop Pike were both provided with 50 ft towers, so the elevated position at Arncliffe Wood was used to good effect. The tradition of short structures continued as the site developed, with at least a dozen individual towers in place by the 1970s. Detailed OS maps do not seem to be available for the period of interest, however it appears the original 1951 installation was in the north west corner of the current compound.
The "Backbone" scheme emerged from 1950s plans and was subject to contracts in the early 1960s - this required SHF links which avoided major centres of population but many of the sites eventually used were those originally developed for the 1951 TV link. At Arncliffe Wood the routing to the north diverged via Muggleswick - avoiding Pontop Pike - and to the south it seems all traffic was diverted to Hunters Stones before being split to bypass Leeds (Tinshill) where required. It is unlikely a direct route continued between Arncliffe Wood and Tinshill after Hunters Stones was available. A minor branch in the "Backbone" scheme ran between Arncliffe Wood and the exchange at Darlington. This entered service in 196? using 2 GHz equipment (type RS 9/?).
Radar links for the Linesman/Mediator system were required from Boulmer to London and to Neatishead - this traffic was routed via Arncliffe Wood by around 1967 and the site subsequently carried telephony links between Leeds and Newcastle, continuing to Edinburgh. The original 1951 television route was not upgraded for 625-line colour links and for a period there were no television links north from Leeds (Newcastle was served by a branch from Carlisle) however circuits were subsequently provided linking YTV and Tyne Tees as part of Trident Television.
The towers at Arncliffe Wood are arranged in two rows to allow dishes to face approximately north west and south west. Most photos of the site are from the southern side and show the dishes facing Hunters Stones. A photo published in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1973 shows one "large" and one "small" horn facing south west, plus five large dishes, all on separate short towers. A similar number of antennas faced north west. By the mid-1980s new dishes for 11 GHz digital links were added, possibly requiring at least one further structure! Some "pruning" had occurred by 2005 though other large dishes appear still to have been in place at the end of 2011 but cleared by early 2015.
