Beaumanor Hall Beaumanor Hall is a stately home with a park in the small village of Woodhouse on the edge of the Charnwood Forest , near the town of Loughborough in Leicestershire , England . It was built in 1845 - 7 by architect William Railton in Elizabethan style for the Herrick family . and is a Grade II * listed building It was used during the Second World War for military intelligence . It is now owned by Leicestershire County Council as a training centre , conference centre and residential facility for young people . Beaumanor Park history . Until just preceding the Second World War in 1939 , the Herrick family owned the park . The estate consisted of Beaumanor Hall , several farms , St Mary ' s in the Elms church , the vicarage house ( Garats Hay ) , workers houses / cottages along Forest Road and 350 acres ( 1 . 4 km² ) of beautiful parkland . In 1939 the War Office requisitioned the estate , including Garats Hay , and the vicar moved to a cottage in the village . The park became a secret listening station where encrypted enemy signals ( Morse code ) were intercepted and sent to the famous Station X at Bletchley Park ( by motorbike everyday ) for decoding . Beaumanor Park was to be the home of the War Office ‘ Y ’ Group for the duration of the war . After the war ( 1945 ) the Beaumanor estate passed back to Lt . Col . Assheton Penn Curzon Howe Herrick , who in 1946 , for financial reasons ( death duties , etc . ) , decided to dispose of his assets . In a sale conducted at the Town Hall in Loughborough on December 20 – 21 , 1946 , the War Office bought both Beaumanor Hall and Garats Hay and some of the immediate surrounding grounds used during the war . Beaumanor Hall history 1939 – 1970 . From 1939 the hall itself was occupied by Number 6 Intelligence school , and the rooms inside Beaumanor Hall were used as a training centre for the Civilian Staff of the Post Office , Civil Service and Merchant Navy . The Royal Corps of Signals , Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were also having military staff trained inside the hall . The huge cellars stretching underneath the whole of the building were used as electricians ' workshops . The outbuildings and stables at the side and rear of the hall were used as workshops . These housed aerial riggers , a barracks store , M T Office , transport garage workshop and the instrument mechanics ' laboratory . By late 1941 , most of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force military personnel had left for duties at other Y - stations , and the main part of the site became the home of the Royal Signals . Military personnel were still being trained inside the hall for various tasks until the end of the war . In February 1942 the first of the newly trained ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service arrived at Beaumanor and were billeted in outlying villages and Garats Hay hall . Beaumanor became one of the most important of the small number of strategic intercept stations , or " Y stations " , intercepting enemy radio transmissions and relaying the information to " Station X " , at Bletchley Park , for decryption and analysis . It is known that one of the first confirmations of the successful Operation Chastise mission was received here . It is also widely rumoured that this listening post knew details of the Katyn massacre as early as 1941 ; however , the British government files were not released to the public , as it would implicate surviving perpetrators . By 1943 , Room 61 on the top floor of the hall was being used for Radio Finger Printing ( Ackbar 13 ) . This new technology was employed to uniquely identify the particular wireless set that was being used to send the transmissions . Special receiving sets filmed the signals as they came in , like a cathode ray tube , and then the signals were captured on film and developed . Light tables were then used to compare the signals in order to verify who was sending them . A civilian from military intelligence at Bletchley Park was in charge of this room . The Radio Direction Finding records room was next door and kept records of the signals ' exact locations of origin . In 1940 the use of the hall for all of these different functions allowed for the required specially designed wireless set rooms to be constructed in the grounds of the hall . This was instead of converting the existing rooms within the building for this purpose . A field to the north of the hall was chosen as the ideal location to construct the new set huts . In the mid - 1970s the hall was bought by Leicestershire County Council , developing quickly into a busy Conference and Education Centre . The operational huts . The War Office Y Group had acquired an architect who worked as part of the local staff at Beaumanor , and he was tasked with designing the set rooms and other buildings . These were to be disguised and fitted into their surroundings by being made to look like normal outbuildings associated with a country house . This disguising is unique to Beaumanor , and there are no current records of any other buildings the military used during the war being disguised in this way . A twenty acre ( 81 , 000 m² ) field to the north of the hall was chosen as the appropriate site to build the required operational set rooms ( huts ) . The huts were spaced far enough apart to avoid collateral damage should a bombing raid occur . Each hut was brick - built with blast walls , and then a disguising outer covering was put over it . The huts were disguised in different ways : one to look like a cart shed with barn ( J ) , two to look like cottages ( H & I ) , the fourth to look like stables ( K ) , the fifth disguised as a glasshouse ( M ) block , and the sixth , Hut G , as a cricket pavilion complete with a false clock tower . To give them an identity , the huts were each given a letter of the alphabet . The four huts around the perimeter of the field were lettered H , I , J and K . These huts were to be the four set rooms , which housed the wireless receivers for intercepting messages . All of the cables and aerial feeds were located in underground ducts . Each hut had a pneumatic tube for sending the handwritten , received messages to G hut via a cylinder , which was shot down the tube . This tube system was also underground and out of sight . In order to carefully conceal them , the other huts were given wooden exteriors and located in the wooded area to the rear of the hall on its western side . These huts were lettered A , B , C , D , E and F .