Catalogue description Records of interception and direction finding station at RAF Cheadle

In 1919 the newly created Government Code and Cypher School absorbed a network of several interception stations that had been set up by the Admiralty and the War Office during and after the First World War to detect and record enemy communications. The network was developed in the inter-war years, with interception and direction finding stations (known collectively as 'Y' stations, Y being the term used for wireless interception) opening in strategic sites across the UK and overseas, usually in military bases operated by the relevant armed service.

In 1938, all the Y stations in the UK were linked by direct telephone and teleprinter connections. One station, on the RAF base at Cheadle, was made the controlling station of the network.