The Surrey home that once controlled time

For years, Abinger Bottom, deep in the Surrey Hills near Leith Hill, played a vital role in keeping clocks across the UK in time.

Most people associate Greenwich with timekeeping in Britain, but it was in Surrey that Greenwich Mean Time was kept on track after the outbreak of World War Two.

Despite no longer being used for the purpose, Abinger was also a testing site for some of the systems that underpin modern timekeeping.

Ronald McGill, who currently owns the house, told Secret Surrey: "There's all these little pointers of history here."

He added: "Some of the buildings are quite ramshackle. They had to be very carefully designed, as the instruments had to be suspended to avoid vibrations.

"There's a real feel of the atmosphere and I like that the house hasn't been messed around with too much."

Timekeeping can be a fickle pursuit, McGill said, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich quickly became a difficult place to keep measurements accurate, as electricity from the railways interfered with the equipment.

In 1940, amid fears the observatory could be a target during the Blitz, timekeeping services were moved to Abinger.

Abinger began as a magnetic observatory in 1924, but the information from the newly-moved timekeeping service helped to governments, navigators, and even the BBC in time with each other.

The familiar six pips of the Greenwich Time Signal, still heard in some of the BBC radio output, would have been maintained from the Surrey Hills.

Abinger used some of the most state-of-the-art technology available at the time, including quartz clocks which paved the way for modern timekeeping.

Nowadays, Abinger Bottom does not keep up its once vital role. Timekeeping was eventually moved to Herstmonceux in 1947, and its magnetic work was taken up in Devon.

For Ronald, the site is now just home, and one that he has been happy at for many years.

He said: "I'm going to struggle to leave, we have been very happy here for 30 years.

"I'm sure the next occupants will be very happy here too."

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