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37-749: The inaugural 2002 ceremony was known as the Interactive Music Awards, and was set up and sponsored by BT Openworld. The ceremony was held inside the BT Tower in London. The 2002 winners were: The 2003 winners of the Interactive Music Awards were: In 2004 the ceremony was renamed to the Digital Music Awards. The 2004 award winners were: The 2005 award winners included: The 2006 award winners included: The 2007 award winners included: The 2008 award winners included: There

74-477: A circumference of 59 m (194 ft). The display is switched off at 10:30pm each day. On 31 October 2009, the screen began displaying a countdown of the number of days until the start of the London Olympics in 2012. In April 2019, the display spent almost a day displaying a Windows 7 error message. In October 2009, The Times reported that the revolving restaurant would be reopened in time for

111-555: A further section of aerial rigging bringing the total height to 620 feet (189 m). Upon completion in 1964, it overtook the Millbank Tower as the tallest structure in London until 1980, when it was overtaken by the NatWest Tower . It was opened in 1965 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson . A 360° coloured LED screen near the top of the tower displays news across central London. In February 2024, BT Group announced

148-477: A kitchen. At the top was a pulley room and above that the left motor room and ventilation plant. There were sixteen equipment floors between 115ft and 355ft. The restaurant was called 'Top of the Tower', where meals were about £4. In its first year the Tower hosted just under one million visitors and over 100,000 diners ate in the restaurant. A set of two stamps, designed by Clive Abbott (born 1933), 3d and 1/3,

185-443: A reinforced concrete pyramid. The stainless steel clad windows were made by Henry Hope & Sons, of Halford Works, Smethwick. The tower was officially opened to the public on 19 May 1966, by Postmaster General Tony Benn (then known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn) and Billy Butlin , with HM Queen Elizabeth II having visited on 17 May 1966. As well as the communications equipment and office space, there were viewing galleries,

222-508: A revolving restaurant, and finally a cantilevered steel lattice tower. To prevent heat build-up, the glass cladding was of a special tint. The construction cost was £2.5 million. Construction began in June 1961; owing to the building's height and its having a tower crane jib across the top virtually throughout the whole construction period, it gradually became a very prominent landmark that could be seen from almost anywhere in London. A question

259-455: A souvenir shop and a revolving restaurant on the 34th floor; this was called The Top of the Tower, and operated by Butlins . It made one revolution every 23 minutes. Butlins were given the lease to restaurant in November 1963; it would open by the end of 1965. The section above the microwave dishes had two observation floors, a tea bar, a revolving restaurant, a cocktail bar, and above that

296-540: A station and had cost £8,500,000 (approx. £1,800 million inflation adjusted as share of GDP). As a way to minimise the risk of damage in the event of an explosion taking place the buildings were widely spaced and some were mounded up to the eaves. In July 1940 Lawrence Gale from the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, was appointed the Superintendent, taking 9 staff with him, and when the first shells rolled off

333-464: Is concrete clad in glass. The narrow cylindrical shape was chosen because of the requirements of the communications aerials: the building will shift no more than 25 centimetres (10 in) in wind speeds of up to 150 km/h (95 mph). Initially, the first 16 floors were for technical equipment and power. Above that was a 35-metre (115 ft) section for the microwave aerials, and above that were six floors of suites, kitchens, technical equipment,

370-466: Is often said that the tower did not appear on Ordnance Survey maps, despite being a 177-metre (581 ft) tall structure in the middle of central London that was open to the public for about 15 years. However, this is incorrect; the 1:25,000 (published 1971) and 1:10,000 (published 1981) Ordnance Survey maps show the tower. It is also shown in the London A–Z street atlas from 1984. In February 1993,

407-484: The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and this has continued in a more permanent form as BT Tower Observatory, an urban atmospheric pollution observatory to help monitor air quality in the capital. The aim is to measure pollutant levels above ground level to determine their source. One area of investigation is the long-range transport of fine particles from outside the city. On 21 February 2024, BT Group announced

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444-474: The 2012 London Olympics. However, in December 2010, it was further announced that the plans to reopen had now been "quietly dropped", with no explanation of the decision. For the tower's 50th anniversary, the 34th floor was opened for three days from 3 to 5 October 2015 to 2,400 winners of a lottery. The BT Tower was given Grade II listed building status in 2003. Several of the defunct antennae attached to

481-482: The MP Kate Hoey used the tower as an example of trivial information being kept officially secret, and joked that she hoped parliamentary privilege allowed her to confirm that the tower existed and to state its street address. The tower is still in use, and is the site of a major UK communications hub. Microwave links have been replaced by subterranean optical fibre links for most mainstream purposes, but

518-516: The area and a YWCA hostel was built to house 1,000 women. The factory employed a three shift system so that production was continuous, combining with the transport system so that as it dropped off one shift of employees it would take home another shift. In December 1940, a railway station was opened on the Liverpool to Wigan Wallgate line to service the factory. It closed in March 1946. The ROF

555-581: The assembly line in September 1940 there were only between 50 and 100 employees. By the summer of 1941 this had risen to 10,000 before rising to a peak of around 23,000 employees, most of whom were women. Medical treatment rooms were built onsite in order to cater to such a large workforce. When the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich was bombed, it had to be closed down and many workers and a large amount of material were transferred to ROF Kirkby. In order to house these employees, 200 houses for key workers were built in

592-590: The bomb was claimed by members of the Angry Brigade , a far-left anarchist collective. A call was also made by a person claiming to be the Kilburn Battalion of the IRA . That act resulted in the tower being largely closed to the general public. The restaurant was closed to the public for security reasons a matter of months after the bombing in 1971. In 1980, Butlins' lease expired. Public access to

629-456: The building ceased in 1981. The tower is sometimes used for corporate events, such as a children's Christmas party in December, BBC's telethon Children in Need ( Children in Need 2010 was hosted from the tower), and other special events; even though it is closed, the tower retains its revolving floor, providing a full panorama over London and the surrounding area. The first documented race up

666-476: The building is by two high-speed lifts, which travel at a top speed of 1400 feet per minute (7 metres per second (15.7 mph)) and reach the top of the building in under 30 seconds. The original equipment was installed by the Express Lift Company of Northampton, but it has since been replaced by new elevators manufactured by ThyssenKrupp . Due to the confined space in the tower's core, removing

703-413: The building were protected by this listing, meaning they could not be removed unless the appropriate listed building consent was granted. Permission for the removal of the defunct antennae was approved in 2011 on safety grounds, as they were in a bad state of repair and the fixings were no longer secure. The last of the antennae was removed in December 2011, leaving the core of the tower visible. Entry to

740-408: The early 2000s introduced a 360° coloured lighting display at the top of the tower. Seven colours were programmed to vary constantly at night and intended to appear as a rotating globe to reflect BT's "connected world" corporate styling. The coloured lights give the tower a conspicuous presence on the London skyline at night. In October 2009, a 360° full-colour LED-based display system was installed at

777-511: The former are still in use at the tower. The second floor of the base of the tower contains the TV Network Switching Centre which carries broadcasting traffic and relays signals between television broadcasters, production companies, advertisers, international satellite services and uplink companies. The outside broadcast control is located above the former revolving restaurant, with the kitchens on floor 35. A renovation in

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814-456: The motors of the old lifts involved creating an access hole in the cast iron shaft wall, and then cutting the 3-ton winch machines into pieces and bringing them down in one of the functioning lifts. In the 1960s an Act of Parliament was passed to vary fire regulations, allowing the building to be evacuated by using the lifts – unlike other buildings of the time. In 2006, the tower began to be used for short-term air-quality observations by

851-495: The outskirts of Liverpool , Merseyside . The rural location was to reduce the potential damage from any accidental explosions. Munitions were produced from September 1940 to March 1946. Original planning for the site began at Royal Arsenal , Woolwich , with Sir Alex Gibson acting as consultant and Holloway Brothers the contractors. When completed the factory consisted of more than 1,000 buildings, 18 miles (29 km) of roads and 23 miles (37 km) of railway lines along with

888-544: The planning stage. These links were routed via other GPO microwave stations at Harrow Weald , Bagshot , Kelvedon Hatch and Fairseat, and to places like the London Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton . The tower was designed by the architects of the Ministry of Public Building and Works : the chief architects were Eric Bedford and G. R. Yeats. Typical for its time, the building

925-425: The sale of BT Tower to MCR Hotels , who plan to preserve the tower as a hotel. The tower has appeared in various novels, films, and television shows including Smashing Time , The Bourne Ultimatum , Space Patrol (1962) , Doctor Who , V for Vendetta , The Union and Danger Mouse . It is toppled by a giant kitten in the 1971 The Goodies episode " Kitten Kong ", a parody of King Kong . It

962-489: The sale of the tower to MCR Hotels , who plan to turn it into a hotel. BT will retain ownership for a few years until the tower has been vacated. The tower was commissioned by the General Post Office (GPO). Its primary purpose was to support the microwave aerials then used to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country, as part of the General Post Office microwave network . It

999-425: The top of the tower, to replace the previous colour projection system. The new display, referred to by BT as the "Information Band", is wrapped around the 36th and 37th floors of the tower, 167 m (548 ft) up, and comprises 529,750 LEDs arranged in 177 vertical strips, spaced around the tower. The display was the largest of its type in the world, occupying an area of 280 m (3,000 sq ft) and with

1036-455: The top. Much of the telecommunications equipment made by GEC of Coventry. Due to its importance to the national communications network, information about the tower was designated an official secret. In 1978, the journalist Duncan Campbell was tried for collecting information about secret locations, and during the trial the judge ordered that the sites could not be identified by name; the tower could only be referred to as 'Location 23'. It

1073-408: The tower's stairs was on 18 April 1968, between University College London and Edinburgh University ; it was won by an Edinburgh runner in 4 minutes, 46 seconds. In 1969, eight university teams competed, with John Pearson from Manchester University winning in a time of 5 minutes, 6 seconds. The first microwave link would be to Norwich on 1 January 1965. The Met Office put their weather radar on

1110-594: Was Peter Lind & Company . The company was founded in 1915 by Danish Peter Lind (he died aged 66 in Surrey in December 1966), headquartered on Watling Street in Cannock . The tower was originally designed to be just 111 metres (364 ft) high; its foundations are sunk down through 53 metres (174 ft) of London clay , and are formed of a concrete raft 27 metres (89 ft) square, 1 metre (3 ft) thick, reinforced with six layers of cables, on top of which sits

1147-470: Was also the title of jazz band, the Dudley Moore Trio's track "G.P.O. Tower", from the soundtrack to the feature film Bedazzled (1967), directed by Stanley Donen , where it also appeared on screen. ROF Kirkby ROF Kirkby , ( Filling Factory No. 7) was a large World War II Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) filling munitions . The factory was based in the rural area of Kirkby , on

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1184-626: Was eventually closed in March 1946, having been designated a War Duration Only ROF. It had produced around ten per cent of all the ammunition used in World War II by Britain. Afterwards the site was developed by Liverpool Corporation as an industrial estate and played a large part in the growth of Kirkby from a population of barely over 3,000 in 1951 to over 52,000 by 1961. There were two explosions at Kirkby ROF, one in February 1944 and one on 15 September 1944. Two people were killed in

1221-507: Was issued on 8 October 1965 for the new tower, which had followed a set of stamps in the previous month for the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Britain . The stamps also featured Nash Terrace. A bomb exploded in the roof of the men's toilets at the Top of the Tower restaurant at 04:30 on 31 October 1971, the blast damaged buildings and cars up to 400 yards (370 m) away. Responsibility for

1258-674: Was no award ceremony in 2009. The 2010 award winners were: The 2011 award winners were: BT Tower The BT Tower is a grade II listed communications tower in Fitzrovia , London , England, owned by BT Group (formerly British Telecom). It was also known as the GPO Tower and the Post Office Tower , and later officially renamed the Telecom Tower . The main structure is 581 feet (177 m) high, with

1295-591: Was prefabricated by Ransomes and Rapiers of Ipswich. The steel lattice was made by Tubewrights Ltd of the Kirkby Industrial Estate (established in 1952, after it moved from Newport in Monmouthshire), owned by Stewart's & Lloyd's. The tower was topped out on 15 July 1964, by Conservative MP for Norwich South , Geoffrey Rippon . It was officially opened by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 8 October 1965. The main contractor

1332-673: Was raised in Parliament in August 1963 about the crane. Reginald Bennett MP asked the Minister of Public Buildings and Works , Geoffrey Rippon , how, when the crane on the top of the new Tower had fulfilled its purpose, he proposed to remove it. Rippon replied: "This is a matter for the contractors. The problem does not have to be solved for about a year but there appears to be no danger of the crane having to be left in situ." Construction reached 475 ft by August 1963. The revolving restaurant

1369-404: Was to be built by end of 1963, and cost £1.5M, on Howland Street. It replaced a much shorter steel lattice tower which had been built on the roof of the neighbouring Museum telephone exchange in the late 1940s to provide a television link between London and Birmingham. The taller structure was required to protect the radio links' "line of sight" against some of the tall buildings in London then in

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