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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Talgarth is a small, quaint market town in mid-Wales and as of 2011 was home to less than 2,000 people. Driving through the narrow country roads you’ll eventually get to two large concrete gate posts – the original entrance to the former Mid Wales Hospital, known as Talgarth Asylum. Due to increasing demand on other…
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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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Nearly 1,000 anti-aircraft sites were built during the Second World War and 192 were retained for use with nuclear weapons in what would be known as the Cold War. Under a plan code named ‘Igloo’, 78 sites were chosen with 54 having guns permanently mounted however at the outbreak of the Korean War, 683 batteries…
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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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Seventeen miles west of Cardiff is the small village of St Athan’s, where this derelict village remains off of an unassuming country road. The idea for building a holiday camp first arose in 1923 when two philanthropists, co-founders of the Boys’ Clubs of Wales, visited a similar site in New Romney, Kent. The Boys’ Club…
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The SS Richard Montgomery was a US Liberty Ship, constructed in 1943. In 1944 it was part of a convoy delivering explosives with 7,000 tonnes on this ship along. Whilst heading to Sheerness on August 12th 1944, the ships anchor was caught in the sandbanks off the Kent coast, causing the vessel to become grounded….
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Now an overgrown brownfield site, this was once the factory for one of the leading fireworks companies in the whole of the UK. Joseph Wells was the founder of ‘Wells Fireworks’ and established it in Dartford in 1837. He learnt his trade as an explosive lighter man, working along the Thames. The company rapidly became…
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