Mannington Hall DCNN 3057 and Houghton Hall DCNN 3027 – A Tale of Two Halls.

Mannington Hall (above) 52.88419 1.17939 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 11/12/1998

Houghton Hall 52.82413 0.65241 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 4 Installed 1/12/2001

The above two sites are both located in north Norfolk, installed just over 3 years apart and are under 35km/22 miles from each other at similar elevations. They are both within the grounds of large stately homes with both having highly modified micro climates in walled kitchen gardens. The weather stations are not installed within the main parts of those gardens but both lie within climate modified areas. They should record well correlated temperatures – though how readings are “interpreted” yet again indicates the Met Office’s flawed methodology.

To review each in turn before making comparisons, Mannington Hall sits to the side of the main house and gardens separated by a band of trees and a vehicle pathway to a “Glamping” field. It is judged class 5 being subject to heavy shade from the trees to the east and south east for most of the day. Not only are motor vehicles able to pass close alongside the screen there are several historic images suggesting parked vehicles. However, the likelihood of compromising interventions distorting readings is best portrayed by a still from this promotional video

The proximity to both tents and activity to the screen calls into question potential inaccuracy of readings and stills from them such as this below indicate meteorologically uncontrolled extraneous heat sources are likely common.

An important point is that this is a manually reporting site with readings taken only once daily at 09:00 as opposed to automatic units broadcasting hourly readings. It is entirely down to the daily observer noting any on site issues rather than unusual temperature spikes being visible remotely and raising questions. And here lies a significant problem with so many of these sites – in the last archived year, 2023, Mannington Hall was only read 191 times out of a possible 365. In 2022 it was only slightly better at 326. More on this later in comparisons.

Houghton Hall is a very large property with extensive ornate gardens. The screen is much closer to the formal gardens and whilst outside the walls is still within the modified climate area with tree shielding of winds, close greenhouses, hard-standing and with unnatural ground cover. General agricultural activity supporting the gardens is evident all around the area. The Met Office feels this is a better site than Mannington but still only Class 4. On original installation it was manually recording and shared similar intermittency of readings to Mannington with numerous completely missing days as well days of only partial readings (i.e. Max but no Min temperatures and vice versa). The archive remarks show entries like these below that even include thermometer breakage:

The Met Office chose to automate this site from 2010 and now readings are both much more reliable and archived as twice daily figures.

The recent data comparison between these two Halls demonstrates the quite bizarre statistical concoctions that the Met Office derives from two sets of incomparable data. Under Freedom of Information Act the Met office supplied temperature reading frequency and annual average temperatures for every weather station in England for years 2021 to 2023. All meteorology would state that Mannington and Houghton Halls would produce almost identical annual averages.

With both stations having a 100% readings record the annualised average of 9.8°C. is, as expected, in perfect parity. However in 2022 reading frequency at Mannington Hall was reduced to only 326 though Houghton Hall must have experienced some transmission issues reducing readings to 349.

Given that missing readings could well be in a specific time of year rather than evenly spread, deriving an annual “mean daily air temperature” seems somewhat unlikely to provide a meaningful figure but with both sites missing readings the divergence was only 0.3°C. However, the 2023 situation was as follows:

With only 191 observations taken at Mannington Hall what possible statistical reasoning is the Met Office following to derive an “annual” average from barely more than half a year’s readings? Did nobody at the Met Office stop to think that the derived figure would likely be 100% meaningless? The sole reason behind the sudden “anthropogenic” annual increase of 1.3°C at Mannington Hall is the absence of readings at cooler times of year. It is so painfully simple to see that this should not require further explanation but just to make the point here is just one section of the archived data.

Surely it is not difficult to see that there were no readings at all between 1/3/2023 and 31/5/2023 and the typical annotations of “N/A” even on days when readings were dated should ring major alarm bells. How accurately taken are the few readings that are actually noted?

It is blatantly obvious that the function of deriving a figure (any figure) to fill “annual average” is more important than the figure having any remote vestige of credibility. Alternatively has AGW suddenly “kicked in” between the Halls? It is worth pausing to consider that these are official data which the Met Office was “forced” to release. What possible confidence can anyone reading these have in the Met Office’s statistical methodology?

Taking this a step further the public has been assured by the Met Office that its fictional non existent weather stations have their “data” provided by high quality “peer reviewed” practises using figures from well correlated sites. {talkshop comment: how more well correlated is it possible to get than Mannington and Houghton Halls?} Putting this to the test, what are the “Location specific, long term averages” a.k.a formerly “climate averages” for these two Halls?

Firstly the quoted “Climate Stations” at Coltishall, Morley St Botolph and Hemsby are all long closed sites whose artificially created ongoing averages will be from “figures” partly derived from demonstrably spurious Mannington Hall readings amongst unspecified others. Secondly why is the extremely long term site at Cromer (with readings from 1884 and the nearest at just 7 miles distant) completely excluded? Are Long-Term figures only long term when it suits the Met office and Location-specific similarly flexible enough to exclude the nearest one?

In Houghton Hall’s case at least all the quoted comparable “Climate Stations” actually do exist, however, one only has to consult a map to consider the differences. Is the extremely coastal Wainfleet no 2 (which only predates Houghton Hall by a few years) really climatologically comparative being in a different county with The Wash in between? Below is the latest real time update from Met Office automatic sites at weatherobs at 16:00 6/3/2025.

Wainfleet is just south of Skegness and reading just 12°C whilst inland Houghton Hall (in common with all inland sites nearby) is reading 16°C or even 17°C. The term “comparable” seems remarkably inappropriate. Again why use Wainfleet when Cromer is actually marginally nearer?

The comparison of the Halls shows yet more low grade sites but more importantly incredibly poor use of statistical representations that are effectively useless. My “Peer Review” process rejecta any use of such statistics.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/03/06/mannington-hall-dcnn-3057-and-houghton-hall-dcnn-3027-a-tale-of-two-halls/