The Secret British Houses Where Spies Radioed Moscow
Nov 21, 2025
I made a video recently in which I told you the story of a Soviet Russian transmitter that was dug up on a farm in north Wales during ploughing.
The evidence pointed towards a Russian spy ring targeting Liverpool who visited a nearby hotel, snook out in the middle of the night to bury the transmitter in a watertight box and then fled the country.
The idea being that the transmitter was available for someone to find and use as part of their subversive activities.
I posed a question in that video. How many more transmitters were buried across the UK, lying dormant ready for a soviet agent to dig up and use when the time was right.
How many others were found? How many are still out there to this day?
This got me thinking of the people who were caught engaging in spying activities involving the reception or transmission of shortwave signals; coded messages if you like… numbers stations.
I’ve covered this at length.
During the height of the Cold War, numbers stations were widely used, and still are to this day, for sending coded messages that could not be decoded. Encrypted is probably a more accurate term.
A one-time pad, concealed in soap, a walnut shell, chewing gum, microdot film, or a simple paper pad was used at both ends to send and receive messages concealed within an unbreakable cipher.
These messages could detail dead letter drops, a location where documents, photographs, or anything else could be left by a handler for an agent to pick up. They could include hotel details, or instructions relating to far more sinister and deadly actions.
With everything I’ve just described, it’s hard not to let the mind wander to a London of days gone by, infiltrated by soviet spies, brimming with them, weaving their intelligence gathering webs throughout the city. I don’t doubt that London is very much the same today.
Envision that web overhead, albeit invisible, however. A web of shortwave communications, penetrating every square inch of the city. A web of secrecy being passed from London to others lurking in the shadows in far flung lands.
This is the story of the secret British houses where spies radioed Moscow.
12:43
www.radioworld.com
www.rnz.co.nz
