BBC Spying and Intelligence Centre Caversham. Reading.

The history of Caversham Park goes back to at least Norman times, when Walter Giffard, a distant relative of William the Conqueror, was given the estate after the 1066 conquest. The estate, then Caversham Manor, was a fortified manor house or castle, probably nearer the Thames than the present house. The estate was registered in the Domesday Book, in an entry describing a property of 9.7 square kilometres (2,400 acres) worth £20.[3] The estate passed to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke and Protector of the Realm, in the late 12th century. Marshall, who in his final years acted as de facto regent under the reign of a young Henry III, died in Caversham Park in 1219.
With the onset of the Second World War, the British Ministry of Health requisitioned Caversham Park, and initially intended to convert it into a hospital. However, the BBC purchased the property with government grant-in-aid funds, and moved its Monitoring Service into the premises from Wood Norton Hall, near Evesham in Worcestershire, in Spring 1943. The nearby estate of Crowsley Park was acquired by the BBC at the same time, to act as the service's receiving station and continues to function in that role. In 1945 1,000 people were working at the site.[20]

In major building works in the 1980s, the BBC Architectural & Civil Engineering Department restored the interior of the mansion, removed utilitarian brick buildings put up on the east side of the mansion during the war, converted the orangery (then being used as a canteen) into editorial offices, and built a large new west wing to house the listening room. This included a new glazed atrium facing the original stable block. A new east wing was built in the 1990s. A further major building project in 2007–08 saw the west wing converted to house all of Monitoring's operational staff.

A large 10-metre (33 ft) diameter satellite dish was erected in the grounds in the early 1980s. It was later painted green (rather than white) to reduce its obtrusiveness. Shortwave aerials in front of the house were removed.

In the 1980s, the formal name of the service was shortened to "BBC Monitoring".

In 2016 it was announced that BBC Monitoring would move to London with the loss of a number of jobs.[20] In late 2017 the BBC announced it was selling the Grade II-listed Caversham Park estate in an effort to save money on property costs.[20] The BBC finally left Caversham Park after 75 years in November 2018





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Also present on this explore were
Exploring With Ashe - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpWZlgMiIcXCddXA5PB-iJw
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