Group Of Anti-Tank Pimples

This is a group of concrete anti-tank obstacles, also known as "Dragon's Teeth," constructed around 1940. They form a line running southwest to northeast, approximately 85 meters long, along the northern side of Medway Road, east of Cumberland Road and southeast of the Chatham Lines. The pimples are arranged in rows, five deep in places, and are of a standard symmetrical, truncated pyramidal shape. Some in the central area are partially buried, suggesting that additional examples may be fully buried further to the east. To the west, the anti-tank pimples are visible, although overgrown.

These obstacles were erected as part of the anti-invasion defenses for Chatham, Gillingham, and Brompton, designed to protect the dockyard and barracks. They filled a gap in earlier Napoleonic defenses which were adapted for an anti-tank stop-line during World War II, bridging the gap between former dockyard police houses and the entrance to the Nore Command Bunker. The Nore Command Bunker was used by the Commander-in-Chief responsible for protecting the entrance to the Port of London and traffic along the east coast. The anti-tank obstacles are documented in "The Garrison Plan to Defeat Invasion" of 1941. Their tactical purpose was to prevent enemy progress, and should a vehicle attempt to cross an obstacle, its underside would be exposed to defensive fire.

The structures are part of a larger context of anti-invasion defenses, as identified by an English Heritage Monument Protection Programme study. This study, drawing on the Council for British Archaeology's Defence of Britain project, resulted in recommendations for designation and identified Medway Road as one of 46 good examples out of 112 nationally.

The group is designated at Grade II primarily because it is a good surviving example of anti-tank obstacles and one of only two known groups associated with the re-use of the Chatham Lines during World War II; they possess group value in relation to the Lines and the adjacent Nore Command Bunker.