Jodrell Bank

After the Second World War physicist Bernard Lovell decided to use old wartime radar equipment to search for "cosmic rays". In the middle of Manchester the nearby trams interfered with the equipment. A site in the Cheshire countryside was suggested to him to build his radio telescope. The project was running out of money, over budget,  over time and beset by strikes, ( plus ça change etc), the whole thing was going to be shelved and the metal sold off for scrap. But then the space race between the USA and the USSR, followed by the Cold War made  his work suddenly rather important and means were found to complete the task. ( He never found cosmic rays)
It was the largest steerable radio telescope in the world then and is still the third largest. It's an amazing and  beautiful structure and is still in  use, carrying out research into pulsars, quasars black holes etc. 
I had a wonderful day out at this place today. 
The new visitor centre is excellent with a cafe and a planetarium with talks displays and hands on stuff for kids of all ages.
The extra shows a  plasma ball, the concrete and steel visitor centre , slides made by a contemporary artist from old images of stars, and the slot window along the north/south meridian rather as humans have done for centuries, with a sliding panel , presumably to focus the sun on different spots along the meridian. 
Plus a couple of quotes.