The Fall of France and evacuation of the BEF from European soil left Britain standing alone and highly vulnerable to invasion and with very little armour, artillery and small arms with which to defend itself. For most people the story then continues "Our victory in the Battle of Britain gained air superiority for Britain and banished the threat of invasion". This is of course true, but putting planes in the air was not the only thing Britain did to defend itself with the meagre resources at hand during this critical phase of the European war. The less well known story is that of the fortifications that were frantically built all across the nation where threat of invasion was greatest. General ironside, Commander of the Home Forces, was given the task of organising the defence of the UK should the Axis mount an invasion and he chose to employ a system of static defences designed to compartmentalize an invading force and slow them down enough that the better equipped and mobile reserves could rush to the critical points and engage the enemy, this would make up for the lack of mobility and poor equipment of the home forces at the time. This became known as the stop line concept and within a few short months in 1941 over 10,000 pillboxes, roadblocks and anti tank defences were constructed on the coast of England and Scotland and on the main stop lines in the South East of England. Even as the stop lines were being built policy changed, as it was felt we were developing a Maginot mentality. General Brooke who had opposed the stop line concept was appointed in Ironsides place and halted the construction of the stop lines in favour of a concept of nodal defence. Essentially fortifying towns and villages on critical road and rail junctions which would force an invading army to stop and reduce these strong points before proceeding. The nodal point concept reused many of the fortifications that had been built to that point, but more were built around these nodal points. Indeed pillboxes and roadblocks continued to be built throughout the war but the vast majority came into being in these early war years when the threat of invasion was at its highest. After the war many of these defences were immediately demolished, especially those on the coast which were perceived as ugly and those that impinged on road and rail infrastructure. Surprisingly though many of those built inland still survive today and in the late 1990's the Council for British Archaeology commissioned a survey to discover what remained, which became known as the Defence of Britain survey (DoB). The project was closed down in the early noughties but managed to uncover and record the vast majority of surviving defence structures, its database can be accessed online at http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/dob/ Some years ago I when Google earth was released to the public I got permission from the CBA to convert the DoB data into a Google earth overlay which I duly did. During the course of this conversion I virtually visited each of the 16,000 placemarks to check it's location and validity and soon realised that many of the sites were mistyped or mislocated and many that were plainly obvious on Google earth (often within a few hundred yards of a recorded site) had been missed altogether. At that point I resolved to add and correct as many sites as I could and the Extended Defence of Britain (EDoB) project was born. At first I did this alone but now a small group of like-minded souls from forums such as this one and societies such as the Pillbox Study Group help out by collecting information on existing and previously unrecorded sites. The result is a database which can be downloaded in Google earth format from the link in my signature. For those of you in the UK I would encourage you to take a look at what is close to you, maybe go and visit a few sites if they are publicly accessible or ask permission from the owner if they aren't. Please don't enter any structures that seem unsafe or are underground. If you find or know of something that hasn't been recorded or think a site needs correcting please post in this thread or PM me. Only in rare cases do they have protected status and unfortunately increasing urbanisation in the UK means these sites are rapidly disappearing under new housing and need to be recorded before they go, so any help with our project, however small, would be greatly appreciated. Happy Hunting Steve
I do constantly..Especially around West Midlands...There are numerous airbases and nodal points...some great published works includlcng some on Auxiileries such as Mercian Maquis...some great maps of Nodal points...Evesham, Pershore Brum etc...And Spiget mortar base plates and memorials everywhere...Tank traps gun positions, AA, searchlight posts...Pill boxes...in abundance round here..And documents pointing them out. I'd encourage all in UK to look at their local areas.d A good starting point is to look on English Heritage...not always up to date..but gives a brief explanation of each local site in ww2 that they are aware of.
As Gordon knows..my pet peeve over last few years is finding out about Bredon Hill's role in ww2...Defford I know of..and Malvern connections..Conderton etc...GCIs etc...the Aux link to Bredon and Overbury and the diamonds link from Holland together wilth Overbury and Bank of England...Holland Martin Family..And BBC at nearby Wood Norton...All involved in shenanagins in early days of war...Bredon hill though still has lots of secrets to tell.. Y station at Alcester and the bombing of Coventry figures highly in this I believe...but am having trouble making the official linkeage.
I hope you can point out any missing sites or errors in your neck of the woods then. I'd love to see those nodal point maps you mention. Unfortunately I don't have time to visit TNA to do in depth research and the nature of this project is too huge for one person to go into that kind of detail anyway, so we rely on individuals like yourself who have that detailed knowledge. I should note that all unrecorded sites we find are periodically submitted to English Heritage, RCAHMS, RCAHMW and the relevant HERs for inclusion in their databases, although as you say some of them are a bit slow to update their systems.
Nice work, Steve. As you probably know, the Scottish end of the DoB suffered from a distinct lack of participants; I think there were only about a dozen of us!
Probably not very exciting, but these Home Guard practice trenches at Plean Country Park, near Stirling, were recently excavated by the council archaeologist after a tip-off from an elderly local. It's hoped to uncover more in the future.
Think Gordon may have seen this...The site helped fill in a few gaps for me...around here..but there is still much to see and find.. http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/cms/pdf/DoW.pdf
Mick Wilkes's list of local books, gives some good pics, explanations and diagrams of defence islands and Nodal points in the worcs and surroinding counties. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Defence-Worcestershire-Southern-Approaches-Birmingham/dp/1904396801 I have 2 others by him...Mercian Maquis. Auxilleries in area and one on Defence of Birmingham both detailed. Look him up on google..he has some interesting pdf's up too
Hadn't seen that particular guide Tam, but good to see something was organised to record the sites in that area.
