Former Heavy Anti-Aircraft gun site

Former Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Site

This is a Second World War heavy anti-aircraft gun site, built to standard military designs. The operational core comprises a command post positioned approximately 140 metres from the road, with four gun emplacements arranged in an arc to its west, flanked by a linear guardhouse and a taller generator house adjacent to the road.

The command post is a semi-sunken, multi-roomed structure of concrete blockwork with a flat reinforced concrete roof. It follows a slightly modified form of the standard design DFW 55402, with an additional rear room for a central heating boiler—a modification standard on Heavy Anti-Aircraft gun sites that employed female soldiers from the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). The building's internal layout remains complete, though fittings have been stripped as is typical of decommissioned sites. The open observation area on its southern side has been partially buried by later dumped material.

The four gun emplacements follow the standard "accelerated construction" design DFW 55487, built of concrete blockwork and rising from ground level with semi-sunken engine rooms to one side. Both emplacement and engine room are embanked with earth for blast protection. Each emplacement retains its circular metalwork holdfast mounted on a raised central drum, surrounded by a passageway for ejected spent cartridges and an outer raised walkway where the gun crew operated. The outer edge of this walkway is formed by ammunition lockers, which also functioned as an outer blast wall. The attached semi-sunken engine room housed the hydraulic machinery that operated the gun. Equipment has been stripped following decommissioning, but the emplacements are otherwise effectively complete and well preserved; one retains the iron doors to its engine room. Beyond a freestanding blast wall outside each emplacement are remains of a hut base, smaller than a standard Nissen hut, interpreted as crew rest shelters.

The guardhouse is a linear range of seven bays with four doors and three windows, topped by a flat reinforced concrete roof and retaining original internal divisions. The generator house is a taller square building with louvered ventilation openings in its walls and floor ducts for cabling. Both structures were converted to stables by the time of inspection.

Two small concrete structures west of the command post are interpreted as male and female latrines. The area between the emplacements and command post is partially covered with rubble believed to be demolished remains of earlier 3.7-inch gun emplacements sited to the north. This area also contains inspection pits into ducting that linked the emplacements to the command post.

Note: Ordnance Survey mapping of the gun emplacements is incomplete, omitting staircases to engine rooms, freestanding blast walls, crew rest shelters, and earthen embankments, and placing one engine room in the wrong position. The small latrine structures are not shown on Ordnance Survey maps.