WW2 Defences - Holme - next - the - Sea - Norfolk, (Pic Heavy) January 2012

[SaltGeorge]

This is definitely a site I could explain easier with a group field trip! Elvis, there should be a work-in-progress thread in NP, if you want to move that to P. It has hyperlinks to documents on the TNA index and elsewhere, and I think it also includes 1946 aerial photographs (I can't remember how much I added to the WIP thread - if not I can copy across something from PSG or AIx).

The narrow gauge rails that stick up are the end-stop of the red line (from memory). There's a maintenance bunker very close by (there's a second very near here as well).

The structure buried in the sand (third from last photo, numbering photos makes this so much easier) is, I believe, a coast-watch shelter. Possibly for monitoring vessels that might enter the danger zone behind the targets. The structure isn't built very heavily (compared to shell-proof pillbox standards), it has straight-through communications access (both for cables and movement of personel) and the openings are sized and positioned to act as windows rather than embrasures. However, the line of the ditch it sits in may be an A/T defence being ustilised to give (relatively) safe passage behind the targets.

If you look on the beach you can usually find conglomerates of gravel/sand around iron cores. These are 70-year old practice shells. Sometime in the next 6-8 weeks the MOD ordnance teams will be due to make their annual sweep of the beach. Their inerts finds will be piled up somewhere on-site until they get around to removing them.

I know where you mean now for the SM mounts. I didn't have time on my last visit to complete my walk back towards the old coastguard station. I want to get back to the archives and copy the maps for that area as there is quite a bit indicated there. I was concentrating on the other end, looking at the east end of the yellow line to see if there was anything there. The east end is also muddled. Sometime after the war the site was bought and holiday chalets built. There were even plans to build a Butlins holiday camp, but these were permenently shelved after the big floods during 1953. The NOA observatory office is in what I think was the shop. But this appears to be an older building, possibly a garage or a service building. There are some remains in the area that are unclear, they may be associated with the holiday camp, they may be earlier, or they may be out of context. The dunes have shifted a lot over the years. The Firs has been there throughout this, which is another reason for me doubting that the yellow line was a target line and was instead a communications trench. I need to find my notes, but from memory the embankment alongside yellow is noted on maps in the archives as being built from petrol tins.

[SaltGeorge]

Furthest away shelter I found, buried in the bushes, the NG track can just be seen sticking up! Lower left in photo. There are two mounds visible in the photo, and what appears to be some sort of entrance in the middle? The left mound has an inner defence line/ditch.

Those two mounds aren't defensive. They are the elevated dumb-bell loops of the racetrack MTR (moving target range). If you look at the area on Google Earth you can trace the loops of the MTR, every turn (including the loops) has the same radius (which would have been determined by rail gauge and the wheelbase of the trolley). Whereas the linear target ranges (red and blue) were winched targets, the MTR was probably a self-propelled target trolley. By looping around the racetrack the target would have presented a moving target with changing range. On the basis of comments comments from others and looking at other ranges around the country, I think this part of the range was probably used for HMG practice rather than A/T.

[coops]

You boys certainly know your stuff ..thanks for posting this very intresting stuff guys

[SaltGeorge]

I knew I had an aerial somewhere..



The two mounds are roughly at point A. You can make out the compressed "8" of the MTR racetrack. I'm not certain if it's a single track, two left/right out-and-back dumbells, or a combination that could operate in either mode. You can also see that the MTR lies within the jaws of the two winched target tracks.

You can also clearly see the hardstanding firing positions. The archive map notes an observation tower to the ESE of the 525-yard point, "raised observation tower on concrete and tubular scaffolding piles". There may also have been structures to the ESE of the eastern turning circle and on the pads themselves, "wooden hut lying on it's side".

Near where tankman has found the spigot mortar mounts, my notes from the 1950 map indicate, "m/g metal turret" recorded at two different locations, "m/g turret top" and "triple dannert and double apron wire".

To me, that sounds like at least two and possibly three unrecorded Allan Williams turrets (probably removed for scrap with the AFV hulks, but perhaps buried in the dunes?), and s short stretch of a very serious obstacle (training purposes?).

[Tankman]

Spot on SG I knew you would come up with the answers. Its amazing how much talent and information is known by people on the forum. Certainly more intel available from members on here than other UE forums. If you want to get up a military theme, field trip for your neck of the woods I have no problem in joining in over a weekend as I normally visit Norfolk quite a lot.

[KingElvis]

I'd be up for that too, would be great.

[SaltGeorge]

Spot on SG I knew you would come up with the answers. Its amazing how much talent and information is known by people on the forum. Certainly more intel available from members on here than other UE forums. If you want to get up a military theme, field trip for your neck of the woods I have no problem in joining in over a weekend as I normally visit Norfolk quite a lot.

This area is both local and a pet subject of mine. I tend not to post much because it can take me months to get the visits in to a site, get the research done, get in a few repeat visits for bits the research has turned up and then finally get around to getting it all polished off into a history. One visit and a dozen photos doesn't scratch my itch..

If anyone wants a field trip to the area, it might not have any of the big ticket items (assylums, mills, etc), but there is plenty to go at:

• Holme Dunes, Thornham, Brancaster and Titchwell ranges. These are all equally under-researched in the published sources. Holme and Titchwell are nice easy sites to see what's going on if you know what to look for.
• Minor small arms ranges, generally completely over-looked, but access can be awkward and the remains may only be subtle. One not far from Marham looks a good possibility for identifiable features on tyhe ground when the weather improves.
• Airfield decoys and bombing ranges.
• Coastal invasion defences and the defence of King's Lynn Category A nodal point.
• River crossing defences of Fenland, looking at how fixed defences such as pillboxes and spigot mortars were used to defend a strategic locality.
• The Wissington Light Railway. A very quirky standard gauge railway that served the fenland around the Wissington sugar beet factory. Almost nothing left of this, it needs better weather to start looking for the foundations of bridges where the line must have crossed drainage ditches and field boundaries.
• A lost forestry tramway dating from the first world war.
• An experimental flax research station near Sandringham (period film footage here) of which a couple of buildings remain in agricultural use.

West and North Norfolk, the great untapped resource of rural exploration

[simonix]

Cracking info SaltGeorge, if there are any field trips please don't forget me, I can't get enough of the WW2 items in our area.