Rugby Radio Station was a large British government radio transmission facility just east of the Hillmorton area of the town of Rugby, Warwickshire in England. The site straddled the A5 trunk road, with most of it in Warwickshire, and part on the other side of the A5 in Northamptonshire. First opened in 1926, at its height in the 1950s it was the largest radio transmitting station in the world, with a total of 57 radio transmitters, covering an area of 1,600 acres. Traffic slowly dwindled from the 1980s onwards, and the site was closed between 2003 and 2007.[1]
The tallest masts on the site were 820 ft tall, and could be seen from up to 20 miles away, making the site for many years a major local landmark.[2] Since closure, part of the site has been used for a large housing development called Houlton, named after Houlton, Maine, USA the American town which received the first transatlantic phone call from the station in 1927.[3]
Exactly 100 years after the Rugby service entering official service, the Rugby Small scale DAB transmitter, broadcasting from a mast to the East of the site, entered official service on 1st January 2026.