Chatley heath semaphore tower

In the days before the phone, this was the only way to get a message across the country any quicker than a horse or a pigeon. Of course, it rather depended on your tower keepers not being asleep on the job. This semaphore tower is number 6 of 15 towers linking the admiralty in Whitehall with Portsmouth docks. They could send a message to Portsmouth (or back) in 15 minutes. Importantly for this tower it was also the key tower on a division in the line that was to link to another line from the admiralty all the way to Plymouth. However, they got as far as the other side of Hampshire before giving up building more towers. A new fangled device called the electric telegraph was being developed that made them all obsolete.

I imagine the view from the top is pretty good, but today the tower was firmly shut.