Along Salt Lane in Cliffe lies an overgrown pair of air raid shelter tunnels installed to protect industrial workers of the Alpha cement works in WW2. It is suggested that the two shelters remaining today were actually two entrance-ways into a larger shelter capable of holding hundreds of people, although they seem to be of…
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As bombings intensified during the Second World War the Government embarked on a programme of constructing deep level air raid shelters beneath the streets of London, usually near underground stations. This one has some 210 steps before you reach the bomb-proof tunnels where up to 8,000 people would have sheltered. Due to the challenges of…
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According to Historic England, this Bofors light anti-aircraft gun tower was constructed circa 1940 at the start of World War Two as an outlying defence for RAF Kenley; a nearby fighter airfield. It is of the concrete pier design of which few survive nationally, and hence is Grade II listed. It is split down the…
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Once the Second World started in 1939, Britain was keeping a close eye on the east-coast of the country to prevent any German invasion. Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex was little more than a small yacht town before World War Two however the town became much more important when Germany invaded France. With Kent and South-Essex heavily…
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Built close to Dagenham East Station, these anti-tank cylinders were built in World War Two to slow down any German tanks, should they have made it that far. The row of these concrete defences can be seen on Google Maps and spans over 80 metres, with a Type 22 pillbox at the eastern end. On…
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Down an unmade lane in the quaint countryside Essex village of Hatfield Heath lies what at first appears to be a set of abandoned farm sheds. This hutment was in fact Prisoner of War Camp ‘High Hall’ 116, and once housed around 1,500 Italian, Austrian, and (from 1943) German soldiers captured in the European and…
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Situated along the Thames foreshore, these two pillboxes were built around 1940 as part of a huge scheme to build almost 30,000 pillboxes across the country, but especially the south-east. Located about 530 meters apart, each pillbox sits on a corner of the Essex marshes, opposite Greenhithe. Men from the Home Guard would have been…
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Across the country hundreds of air raid shelters were built at the outbreak of World War Two, both above and beneath the surface with the majority built across the South-East. We’ve visited two shelters, one by the coast and the other down the road in Broadstairs. We haven’t published the location of these shelters to…
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This Isle of Sheppey, which name comes from Old English for ‘Sheep Island’, was once two isles, Harty to the south east and the Isle of Elmley to the south west which have overtime merged, giving us the one island we know today. The port at Sheerness dates back to the 17th Century when it was established by…
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Opened in 1943, Rivenhall was used by both the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force. During the war it was used primarily as a combat airfield with various fighter and bomber units based there. In was closed following the end of the the war in 1946 although it was kept in reserve for a following…
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