History
Morborne Hill was planned as an intermediate site on the Birmingham to Norwich television link and provide a feed to the adjacent BBC transmitter which entered service in October 1959. An article in The Engineer gives a detailed account of the planned route which went via Oakham and Wickhambrook.
A 1959 network map shows the site (as "Peterborough") with a further route towards "Grantham" then north to Patrington "programmed". The route from Birmingham to Tacolneston is both "existing or under construction" and except for the section from Birmingham to "Coalville" (Copt Oak) is also shown as "programmed", along with a route from Charwelton to Coalville. It seems this second route relates to the 1956 Backbone project, deliberately avoiding Birmingham.
An archive photo from 1961 shows a large square tower supporting only one dish - information from the Post Office Chief Engineer's Annual Report for 1961-62 indicates that the link from Birmingham had just entered service and temporary arrangements between Peterborough and Norwich had been replaced.
Old OS maps are not available for the period of direct interest and the site is apparently non-existent in 1958. A 1973 plan at 1:2500 scale, however, shows the expected building and circular tower, together with two other "mast" structures to the south of the building, one of very large cross section. The broadcast station, with its own mast, is in a separate compound to the east. Aerial photographs show a number of objects, assumed to be concrete blocks of varying sizes, in this area. Three large blocks (a fourth may be concealed below the "link" running from the building to the concrete tower) appear to correspond to the position of the large "mast" and four smaller blocks also remain visible, again corresponding to the smaller structure. It thus appears the site may have progressed from a small square tower to a larger steel tower before the concrete structure.
The network routing to the east of Morborne Hill has altered since the original arrangements. The direct route to Wickhambrook (for the Tacolneston television link) was replaced by a general-purpose route via Wisbech and a route from Sibleys via Over was added. The latter is understood to have formed the basis for a route from London to Leeds - primarily for telephony - which headed north from Morborne Hill via Kirkby Underwood. The structures along this route were mainly the 1960s "standard tower" - with one subsequent replacement at Farley in the early 1970s. It appears from the number of dishes eventually installed at Kirkby Underwood that this was a route carrying heavy traffic. In comparison the link between Copt Oak and Morborne Hill would have been constrained by the limited capacity of the tower at Oakham. Wisbech, along with Over, also appears to have been "busy".
Details of television links in the Birmingham area include routes via Morborne Hill and this shows the addition of three links for Anglia Television studios at Luton, Northampton and Peterborough. In each case it appears the link ran by cable to a local BT building. For Luton the link continued on SHF via Dunstable. For the other studios it seems SHF links were provided beween the BT building and a convenient point in the existing network. For Peterborough it seems most likely a direct link was provided to Morborne Hill. Remote switching was provided to allow one of the studios to be connected to the route towards Norwich.
The concrete tower at Morborne Hill has similarites to that at Purdown but the "galleries" are not equally spaced and might have accommodated large horn antennas. A number of small horns, of a type not seen elsewhere, were installed at one point and a variety of types of dish were in use. Removal of the horns and the oldest dishes seems to have occurred early in 2005 yet other large dishes remained in place until at least 2012.