Woodhead Hall is a country house at Cheadle in Staffordshire. It is a Grade II listed building.[1]
History
Woodhead Hall was originally commissioned by a Mr Leigh and completed in 1720.[2] It was acquired by William Allen, a merchant, in the 1840s and completely rebuilt by William Shepherd Allen to the designs of William Sugden in 1873.[2] It remained in the Allen family, passing to William Allen in 1915, until it became a preparatory school in 1925.[2] At the start of the Second World War it became RAF Cheadle[3] and, as a Y-station, started monitoring important enemy signals information.[4] The main task was to intercept messages from German bombers and ground stations.[5]
The hall continued as a monitoring station during the Cold War, with operations transferring to become part of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in January 1964 when all ministries' civilian interception sites came under its control.[6] GCHQ Cheadle continued to monitor Soviet communications.[7] The station closed in 1995 and the property was sold into private ownership in 1997.[5][2]