History
Standing on Rivington Moor, Horwich is a distinct site from the nearby Winter Hill broadcast mast. Despite their proximity there was no direct traffic between the two sites in normal operation.
The television transmitter (built by the ITA) entered service in 1956. The programme feed was via cable from Manchester. BBC television was addeed from 1964 (via off-air reception of the Holme Moss transmitter). The current 1000 ft mast was completed during 1965 and brought into service for BBC2. UHF colour transmissions for ITV and BBC1 were added by late 1969. We understand all channels were fed via cable from the Manchester TV Network Switching Centre: this allowed the radio links between Manchester and Carlisle to be used for trunk rather than local traffic.
The Post Office site came into operation in 1959 for the South Lancashire Radiophone service. This used a small building and guyed mast supporting a number of dipoles. The 1959 Network Map shows Horwich (as "Winter Hill") on the planned route from Manchester to Carlisle. It is unclear whether any interim arrangement had been made but the current tower was constructed around 1965 (as can be seen in the background of photographs showing progress with the replacement TV mast). The structure is a one-off design, in the form of a tall pyramid with a stepped section at the bottom to support horn antennas. Probably the intention was to transfer the radiophone antennas to the upper part of the tower but the original mast survived until the mind 1970s. The 1959 building is still in place, next to the "new" building from the mid-1960s.
The original SHF installation at Horwich comprised pairs of "large" horns facing Heaton Park and Heysham. During the 1970s they had been joined by a few dishes. By 1998 one of the horns had been removed and the number of dishes had increased significantly. Google Earth suggests the other horns may have been removed by around 2000 and dish clearance seems to have occurred from 2005 onwards.
A "temporary" link from Mold is shown on 1980s network diagrams - this was an inbound circuit for HTV which continued via cable to the Winter Hill television site and the existing cable cable to Manchester. This was later replaced by a link via Pale Heights.
