Chain Home tower at Great Baddow is a Grade II listed building in the Chelmsford local planning authority area, England. First listed on 24 October 2019. Transmitter tower.
Chain Home tower at Great Baddow
- WRENN ID
- under-flue-hawthorn
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Chelmsford
- Constituency
- Chelmsford MP: Marie Goldman (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 24 October 2019
- Type
- Transmitter tower
- Address
- Chain Home tower at Great Baddow, Off Vicarage Lane, Essex, CM2 8JG
- OS grid reference
- TL 726 039
- Coordinates
- 51.7074, 0.49761
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Chain Home tower at Great Baddow is a Grade II listed structure originally built in 1937 at RAF Canewdon in south-east Essex and relocated to Great Baddow in 1956.
This self-supporting transmitter tower, designed by Mr. Norman Garnish for the Air Ministry and constructed by Radio Communication Ltd, features a rectangular plan and is made of bolted galvanised-steel. It is anchored to four reinforced-concrete foundation pads and stands approximately 109.12 meters tall. The tower includes three pairs of cantilevered working platforms located at low (15.2 meters), mid- (62.2 meters), and high (107.9 meters) levels. The mid-level north platform has timber flooring, while the south platform has late-20th century wire mesh flooring; the flooring on the low-level platforms has been removed. The tower also has around 12 metal ladders and landing stages, which were replaced in the late 20th century.
Beneath the tower, there are three detached single-storey huts, and the site is enclosed by a wire-mesh and barbed-wire fence from the late 20th or early 21st century, which is not included in the listing.
Local climate
Chain Home tower at Great Baddow sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 690 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 98% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 76% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 24 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 74% of listed buildings. Of these, 13 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
- 1 Transmitter Tower (tower 2), Transmitter site, former Swingate Chain Home Radar Station
- 2 Chain Home Transmitter Tower at former RAF Stoke Holy Cross
- 3 Chain Home Transmitter Tower, former RAF Stenigot
- 4 Transmitter site (excluding Tower 2), former Swingate Chain Home Radar Station
- 5 Receiver site and Royal Observer Corps Underground Nuclear Monitoring Post, former Swingate Chain Home Radar Station
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