TG1608 : ROTOR Radar station guardroom
taken 8 years ago, near to Little Melton, Norfolk, England
ROTOR was an extensive, elaborate and very costly air defence radar system built by the British Government in the early 1950s in an attempt to counter possible nuclear attacks by Soviet bomber aircraft. In April 1956, 39 new stations were handed over to RAF Fighter Command and the existing structure was re-arranged into six Sector Operational Commands (SOC), each with its own command bunker. Only four of these were however used, one of them being an originally three-level ROTOR bunker located near the village of Bawburgh and RAF Bawburgh was designated the SOC for the Eastern Sector (4).
By the 1960s, many of the bunkers which had been constructed only a relatively short while ago had already become redundant, and when the policy of Regional Seats of Government Headquarters was introduced a number of ROTOR sites where utilised. Bawburgh was designated Sector Operations Headquarters 4.1 (SRHQ4.1). One of the SRHQs' principal roles was the strategic control of the remaining civil defence organisation after an attack, with the aim to conserve resources for longer-term survival rather than short-term aid to the hardest hit areas. In 1968, Bawburgh became the regional Seat of Government, officially referred to as RGHQ4 - Regional Government Headquarters of Region 4 (East).
RAF Bawburgh was decommissioned in 1990 and sold off in 1994 and the main site including the now disused bunker has since been privately owned. A few buildings associated with the site have survived in the vicinity.