Norfolk Pill-Boxes

[Flying10uk]

On a recent trip to north Norfolk I got distracted by these WW2 Pill-Boxes. It would seem that some are of just concrete construction while other examples are of brick and concrete. The Pill-Box in the middle of a modern housing estate looks a little out of place but at least the developer decided to retain it and make it a feature.

[Gil Boyd]

There are a fair few in the Fens of East Anglia generally where they are right in the middle of ploughed fields, where their construction is far to much trouble to try and deconstruct such fortifications when they held small cannons in the some of the wide open areas where they feared German Glider borne troops.
Most appear to be alongside the main A141 road between Huntingdon and Wisbech, very well built.
Here's one where the lampost has arrived post war. These apparently had searchlight units alongside them.

[Gil Boyd]

The fourth shot really gives the incumbents a great field of fire when you consider 75 years on how clear it must have been during WW2

[Flying10uk]

The first 4 pics are of the same Pill-Box and this ones seems a little unusual in that it appears to be 2 "grafted together" which I haven't seen before. It has also been half protected by earth banks/piles. This Pill-Box and the one in the 5th pic are just behind the tree-line in a wooded area next to a field.

[Gil Boyd]

I was speaking to a guy who sadly died last year aged 97 in the village, and he was the Home Guard Sergeant looking after a lot of these boxes and crew, he was telling me all the East Anglian boxes right into London had a searchlight unit attached to them, with some cracking WAAF's doing the business from start to finish!!
Not sure what he meant by that, but he married one of them, so the light must have shown into their eyes

[Mk VII]

In some cases permanent brick shuttering was used because of shortage of shuttering material.
After the war the government offered landowners a small cash payment to waive their rights of reinstatement, where the site was difficult of access or the agricultural value was marginal. Many appear to have accepted.

[Flying10uk]

Some of the pill-boxes that line certain stretches of the river Thames appear to have unusually thin walls. I don't profess to be any sort of expert in the design of pill-boxes but the few that I have examined, some years ago, just seem to have unusually thin walls when compared to other pill-boxes that I have seen in other locations. Some pill-boxes appear to have thick walls but not the ones lining the river Thames.

[Mk VII]

This one is in woods near Cuffley (Herts) on one of the stop lines around London.




Some anti-tank cubes opposite - some would probably have been pulled out into the road at the right time.






Blacker Bombard position in the hedge near Brookmans Park BBC transmitter





Another, near the wireless station.

[Gil Boyd]

I know I have mentioned it before on here, but of course these reminders of WW2 are in view..............I wonder how many "bunkers" that are still full of arms to provide covert operations had we been invaded are still out there unfound.
As I understand it, only a few were trained and in the know of their location..........one has to assume there is a centrally held map somewhere with them all logged. I watched a programme the other night where one was shown with its entry through a false panelled brick wall.

[Peter Laidler]

I recall reading in the papers many years ago oif a fortification that was at sea level on the Kent(?) coast. Once the steel doors had rusted away by the mid 70's, the kids had cleared the sand away, got in and it was pretty much as it was left. Weapons, papers, tables, radios books etc etc. All rusted solid of course by then because while people hadn't be able to get in, the sea water and damp had been able to enter but only to the lower level. Everyone assumed that it'd been cleared and sealed when it was accessed via rusty steel doors, there it all was.