World War II Bofors gun tower and ancillary building

This is a World War II Bofors gun tower and an associated ancillary building. The tower stands at the north-east corner of a football ground and comprises two elevated reinforced concrete platforms, approximately 5 metres high, situated closely together with a narrow gap between them at platform level. The Bofors gun would have been mounted on the larger, north-western platform, and a range predictor (used to calculate the speed and height of enemy aircraft to ensure accurate gun fire) on the smaller, south-eastern platform, designed to prevent the gun’s recoil from disrupting the predictor. A raised hexagonal concrete mount for the gun remains in the centre of the gun platform; it is not known if the steel holdfast frame is still present. The concrete frame of the platforms is infilled with brick. This brickwork has been extended to the rear (north-east) of the range predictor platform to form a concrete-roofed extension, which previously contained a large opening in its south-eastern elevation, now blocked. Small, high-level ventilation openings are set within concrete frames in the brickwork. A large blocked opening is also visible in the north-east wall of the gun platform’s brick infill.

The range predictor platform has two floors, while the gun platform has only one. An external concrete staircase along the south-east elevation allows access from the ground floor to the first-floor ammunition store in the range predictor tower (the entrance door, in the south-west elevation, is now bricked up), and then up to the roof. The ground-floor pillbox-like room in the range predictor tower has a low ceiling. The gun platform features a single high-ceilinged ground-floor room. This room, along with a room in the outshut at the rear of the range predictor platform, would have housed the operations room and generator. An entrance lobby, of likely post-war brick infill, is located between the two platforms.

Approximately 25 metres to the north-east of the tower is a single-storey, rectangular brick building with a flat reinforced concrete roof. It has an entrance on its south-east elevation and a narrow, triple-light, metal-framed window high up in the opposite elevation. This building was probably either a magazine for the Bofors gun or a shelter for off-shift crew members and is included within the listing.