Building No. 3 ('The Cinema'), Former King'S Standing Radio Communications And Transmitter Station

Building No. 3, 'The Cinema'

This is a former transmitter hall dating from around 1942, designed by Cecil Williamson as part of the King's Standing radio communications and transmitter station. It is a rectangular building of eight bays, oriented approximately north-south, constructed in red brick with a concrete frame and glass bricks. The building is divided into two sections: a western section of one and a half storeys and an eastern section of single storey, both with flat roofs divided by concrete cross ribs.

The north elevation features a decorative entrance with vertically laid bricks and a tripartite window with curved brick divisions and glass bricks. The entrance porch has a projecting concrete hood and a curving glass brick rear wall that guides visitors through a pair of double wooden-framed doors with glass panels into the building. A roller-shutter door on the north elevation provides access to the eastern part of the building. The west elevation displays a single long glass brick window with projecting slates running almost its entire length. The east elevation is divided into eight bays by shallow piers and contains glass brick horizontal windows without projecting slates in the second and seventh bays. The central pair of bays have wooden louvres with small high windows and an inserted door. The south elevation has a roller-shutter door to the east and small glass brick windows at ground floor level, with a casement window and paired ventilation windows above. Air ducts and clerestory glazed brick windows appear on the lower flat roof, and access to the roof is via a wall-fixed ladder.

The interior includes a decorative north entrance hall with plastered walls and ceilings in a largely pastel colour scheme with understated gilding. A half-spiral staircase winds around a circular column with a moulded top and mirrored upper surface. The curving stairs retain remnants of a pink and black colour scheme, and there are gilded cone-shaped Art Deco wall up-lights at the top of the stairs. A decorative blind window to the staircase conceals wall lights behind glazing, with a ribbed frame that merges with the ribbed cornice beneath a subtly decorated plaster ceiling. Double wooden-framed glazed doors at the top of the stairs lead to the transmitter hall at mezzanine level. The large transmitter hall formerly housed transmitters known as ASPI 3 and ASPI 6, and includes two small offices along the north wall for shift engineers with glazed partition walls. The hall has a parquet floor and longitudinal ceiling beams. Ground floor accommodation to the east was accessed from the transmitter hall by timber staircases.

The building's design deliberately rejects utilitarian forms in favour of an architectural statement with Art Deco flourishes, reminiscent of 1930s cinema architecture. This is reflected in both its exterior glass brick features and ornamental interior, which explains the building's colloquial name.

The King's Standing station was developed in 1941-42 under the control of the Political Warfare Executive, a branch of British intelligence services, with plans approved by Winston Churchill in 1941. The station's primary 600-kilowatt transmitter was the largest and most powerful in the world at that time and was codenamed 'Aspidistra' (shortened to 'Aspi'), after Gracie Fields' 1928 song 'The Biggest Aspidistra in the World'. The station became operational in early November 1942 with its first transmission consisting of pre-recorded speeches by President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower on the Operation Torch landings in North Africa.

From January 1943 to the end of the war, the station was used by the Political Warfare Executive to broadcast 'black propaganda'—disinformation intended to appear as genuine German radio broadcasts. These broadcasts were instrumental in persuading the German population that the transmissions originated from legitimate German radio stations, allowing them to influence behaviour and disrupt the German war effort. The BBC also used the station to broadcast its European service. From 1943, the Foreign Office's Diplomatic Wireless Service used the facility alongside other operations.

After the war, the Diplomatic Wireless Service continued to operate from the site as a satellite to the main intelligence network at Woburn Abbey, while the BBC continued broadcasting the World Service to Europe. The station ceased to be operational by 1984. The site was subsequently acquired by the Home Office as a location for a Regional Government Headquarters serving Kent, Sussex and Surrey. Sussex Police began using parts of the site in 1988 initially for vehicle storage and public order training, and purchased the entire site as a training facility in 1996.