ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the expansion of nearby villages, towns and cities, the electrification of the railways, and the laying down of power lines, all with resultant changes in the social patterns of the inhabitants of Cheshire. It presents the discourse of interference which is shown to define a distance between the observatory and the urban public: a group, seen as embodying destructive interference, made visible by encroaching 'overspill towns' and transport systems. The chapter then shows how the geographical dispute was resolved through the use of the spatialised discourse of interference that distanced the urban public. The scientific practices of radio astronomy could not exist in isolation from the practices and ways of life of its other neighbours in the North West. The chapter considers the developments in the 1940s and 1950s: the planned expansion of nearby towns as Manchester 'overspills' which caused a clash between the desires of astronomers and local business.
