Ascend the Brightest Heaven…

Description

The band’s uniform badges feature a significant local landmark, a transmission tower officially known as The Arqiva Tower but known more colloquially to locals as ‘Emley Moor mast’. The current elegantly tapered concrete sculpture, the tallest freestanding structure in the UK at 1084 feet, is the third mast on this site and was built between 1969 and 1971 after the catastrophic collapse of the previous structure.

On 19 March 1969 a combination of extreme icing and strong winds caused the tubular mast to collapse across Jagger Lane and the chapel opposite – fortunately, despite the fact that the organist was in the chapel practising, nobody was injured. Several million people lost their BBC2 and ITV signals, until the Independent Television Authority managed to set up a temporary transmitter nearby!

Just over two years later the new mast was operational, and despite initial opposition from some locals who feared another, potentially worse, collapse, Emley Moor Mast is now a popular local landmark and a grade II listed building. In 2015 the mast was illuminated with coloured lights at night to mark the ‘Grand Départ’ of the Tour de France coming to Yorkshire.