Adastral House

Television House
Television House, later "Centrium", in 2008
General information
Architectural style	Edwardian
Town or city	London
Country	United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°30′48″N 0°07′02″W / 51.513393°N 0.117279°W / 51.513393; -0.117279
Technical details
Size	9 storeys, 180,000 sq ft (16,722.5 m2) floor space

Television House, on Kingsway in London was, from 1955, the London headquarters of Associated-Rediffusion, Independent Television News (ITN), TV Times magazine, the Independent Television Companies Association and, at first, Associated TeleVision. It was later the headquarters of 'Rediffusion, London' and its successor, Thames Television.

The Kingsway area had been redeveloped at the start of the 20th century from slums and tenement housing into a broad avenue with grand office buildings and expensive town houses.

After the formation of the Air Ministry in 1918, its headquarters was on Kingsway; one of two identical buildings opposite Bush House became Adastral House, the name being derived from the RAF motto. This remained the home of the Air Ministry through World War II, and the roof of the building in 1940 during The Blitz is where, while fire-watching, Arthur Harris, made the remark about the bombing to a companion, "Well, they are sowing the wind...". The building became famous after the war because the central London temperatures and wind speeds were measured from its roof by the Met Office, and announced as such during the BBC weather forecasts.

In 1954, the Independent Television Authority (ITA) awarded the first two contracts for the new ITV commercial television system. Because the BBC had previously held a monopoly on broadcasting, there were no non-BBC television studio facilities in the UK. Associated-Rediffusion, as one of the two contractors, needed to build from scratch a whole new facility. The company had hired Thomas Brownrigg as General Manager, partially due to his extensive knowledge of planning and project management, which would be needed in simultaneously building a new company and its studios and headquarters.