NHER 63323 (Monument record) - Site of World War One wireless station

This is the site of an early 20th-century wireless station that is one of several in Norfolk recorded as having come under government control at the beginning of World War One.

The Caister on Sea wireless station was originally established by Guglielmo Marconi in 1900 in order to facilitate communications between ships in the North Sea and the Cross Sand lightship. As was often the case the wireless station utilised an existing structure, with the main apparatus and operating room set up within a house on the High Street known as Pretoria Villa. The accumulators were housed in a specially-constructed annex and the engine for charging them was in an adjacent shed. The wireless station was taken over by the Post Office in 1909, and in 1911 was being used to train lightship men in the use of telegraphy equipment. Public use of the facility was suspended during World War One and the station was switched to ‘general working’ in 1915, after telegraph equipment was transferred from the Cross Sand lightship to the Parlour lightship. After the war the Caister station became increasingly obsolete and it eventually closed in 1929, with Pretoria Villa becoming the village police station.

The wireless station lay on the east side of the High Street, halfway between Beach Road and Tan Lane. Although its approximately position is marked on a 1920s Ordnance Survey six-inch map it is unclear at present which building was Pretoria Villa and therefore whether it is still standing. A postcard from the early 1900s titled ‘The Main Street & Wireless Telegraph Station, Caister-on-Sea’ shows the station's two aerial masts, which almost certainly stood in the area of open ground that previously lay to the west of what is now Lacon Lane.

This is one of four Norfolk wireless stations listed in (S1), which provides a basic overview of its known history and probable location. The above summary includes some additional information from (S2) and (S3), which detail events undertaken at Caister on Sea as part of International Marconi Day celebrations. Both credit research by local historian Colin Tooke.
P. Watkins (HES), 22 April 2019.