Siren mystery sparks debate
Reporter: Richard Hooton
Date published: 30 June 2011
A DEBATE has been sparked over the origins of an ancient warning siren.
The Chronicle revealed how Royton couple Mary and Tommy McGann were curious as to whether the Second World War siren in their Haggate garden is the last in Oldham and who it belongs to.
Readers have shared their knowledge, with one believing it to be from the Cold War but another confirming its Second World War roots – though both could be right if the siren was used in both eras.
Saddleworth Parish Council chairman Councillor Bill Cullen worked as a BT engineer and then a manager for 30 years.
He said: “Part of my job at BT was to maintain the network of these sirens and speakers.
“It was part of the nuclear early-warning attack system in the 1960s and will be owned by the Ministry of Defence. It’s what they used to rely on to let the population know if everything was about to go wrong.”
The UK’s Public Nuclear Warning System was decommissioned in November 1992 when the threat decreased and most of the sirens were taken down.
Councillor Cullen said: “Lots of them were put on the tops of mill buildings. It’s not the sort of thing you popped on someone’s house. It looks too new for the Second World War.”
But a retired war duty officer at Oldham Borough Police, who worked there for 29 years before retiring in 1983, said: “It would have been there before then. It must have been from the Second World War.
“It was owned by the Home Office and maintained by the Ministry of Defence but serviced and tested by Oldham Borough Police.
“We used to test them monthly, sometimes all at once from a central room in Manchester. I can’t see them meeting the expense of removing it. They would just leave it there.”
He added that there were at least 30 around the borough, including at the top of Oldham Police Station and Uppermill Police Station, on Briar Mill off Beal Lane, Shaw, and Maple Mill in Hathershaw.
Mrs McGann said she had since spoken to her brother David Cook, who now lives in Spain, and a long-standing neighbour who both said the siren went up in 1942.
