Inside Rudloe Manor House In Corsham
May 08, 2018 6:00 AM ‐ Underground • Weird Wiltshire
This article is more than six years old and was last updated in February 2020.
After years of researching the infamous Royal Air Force base in Corsham, a team of truth seekers have finally got a long awaited visit to the Grade II listed manor house at the centre of the military base.
Matthew Williams of Truth Seekers visited the site along with Steve Wills from the Warminster UFO Group, describing it as "the visit we have been wanting for 20 years." Their adventure was posted in a 45 minute long YouTube video.
The duo "busted" the site in Wiltshire, which is no longer under Ministry of Defence ownership, on a cold winter's afternoon having slipped through a hole in the site's perimeter fence near what was once the main gate.
Rudloe Manor is located in what was RAF Rudloe Manor Site 1 and shot to fame in the mid-90s when rumours leaked that the base was where the RAF dealt with reports of unidentified flying objects. This was later confirmed in 2010 when documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act that stated that until the early part of 1992 the Flying Complaints Flight (FCF) was based on the site.
This department was the central co-ordination point for reports of UFOs made to RAF stations around the country by members of the public. Rudloe Manor's role was to record details of UFO reports and pass them on to the Secretariat (Air Staff) 2 in Whitehall where the reports where then checked for evidence that the UK Air Defence Region might have been compromised by hostile activity.
The FCF was based in a prefabricated office building on the grounds of the manor house. Other office buildings existed on the site, including the headquarters of the Provost and Security Services, which provided security vetting for many government departments perhaps including the MI5 and MI6. This led to the base being described as the British equivalent of Area 51 and the highest point of security in the UK.
In the video the explorers peer through the smashed door of a building known as "The Registry", where all the MOD's secret UFO files would probably have been kept. They then climb through a window into the FCF building, which is now a dilapidated and filled with junk on the floor.
The duo then casually stroll past the caravan of the on-site, 24/7 security presence. Apparently the security guard was out walking his dog. Once clear of security they found away in to the legendary 17th century manor house itself.
The manor was bought for £14,000 by the Air Ministry in 1940 to house the headquarters for the No. 10 Group, part of RAF Fighter Command providing defence to the south west of England and South Wales. The group was disbanded in 1945.
Very little is known about the use of the manor after this time, but the MOD vacated Site 1 and the house in 1998. It has remained vacant ever since and has sadly fallen into a bad state of disrepair and is now on the English Heritage's Heritage at Risk Register.
The guys spend half an hour exploring the three floors of the manor house, which is seen uncut in the video. They then had a quick nose around some of the manor's outbuildings, which include a two-floor detached tithe barn.
Although there are rumours of a network of secret tunnels under the house, the explorers concluded that "it doesn't look like there's any way down to anything beneath here." These rumours most likely related to Site 2, which was situated about a mile away and was also part of RAF Rudloe Manor and it's here, behind the high barbed wire fences and security gates, that ominous buildings hide secret entrances to the vast network of tunnels below.
In fact No. 10 Group had an underground operations centre constructed in Brown's Quarry, a small former stone quarry to the north of Tunnel Quarry, which sits under the base along with Spring Quarry.
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