THE northern mast at Start Point was razed to the ground with explosives last week, after 76 years of transmitting radio signals.

On Tuesday, January 12, one of the support cables on the mast snapped in high winds and the top 150 feet of the mast developed a dramatic ‘tilt’.

A spokesperson for Arqiva, the company who maintain the masts on behalf of the BBC, explained: ‘We can confirm that we have removed one of the masts at Start Point. We believe the mast was damaged as a consequence of bad weather. The mast was beyond reasonable repair so we took the decision to take it down in a controlled way. This site is used to broadcast BBC Radio 5 Live in medium wave and the radio transmissions are continuing.’

Start Point came on air on June 14, 1939 and was initially used to broadcast the BBC’s ‘West of England’ regional programme.

The two masts towered 137 metres above the cliff - and during the Second World War, were used to broadcast the European Service in Norwegian. The transmitter station was also instrumental during the Normandy landings in 1944, transmitting the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme.

In an article for Prospero in July 2004, Stuart Frost, engineer-in-charge at Start Point during the Second World War remembered the broadcast : ‘I remember it being a bright and cheerful opening and directed to all the armed forces taking part in the landings. There were three main bands, the British Band of the AEF, Glenn Miller’s American band and the Canadian Band of the AEF. Dance music in plenty, light entertainment, comedy, war reports and news were the main ingredients. It was a jolly good mixture of English, American and Canadian programmes. It transmitted for almost 24 hours a day with maybe a short break at night for essential maintenance. Occasionally coded information was transmitted in the way of innocent prose.’

After the war, the transmitters continued to broadcast BBC services on medium wave - firstly the West of England Home Service, which later became Radio 4 in 1967. From 1978, the transmitter broadcast Radio 1, but in recent years has transmitted Radio 5 Live.