Today I'm looking at these big hexagonal structures that are just sat in a field getting pooped on by pigeons, rabbits and presumably farm livestock. To the casual observer they're probably quite dismissible, but the historic significance of this little clutter of concrete cannot be understated. These are anti-aircraft gun placements, and they would have shot down any approaching German aircraft during World War 2, preventing them from reaching British cities.
This particular site became operational in 1940, but it's commonly believed that it was constructed during the late 1930s as a prototype artillery site. That's a little slice of pre-war proactivity that paid off. For all the bombs that did fall on British cities, no doubt there are countless others that didn't get the chance, because they were shot down by this place and others like it.
But sweet Judas Christ, I wish I had a wide angle lens, so that I could get the entire thing in frame!
These raised square bits would have been the ammo stores, and if you look really closely, the hinges are still on them, although the doors are long gone.
It's pretty quiet now, being very much off the beaten track, but at their peak anti-aircraft sites collectively employed about 274,900 people. As of the summer of 1941, women were allowed to operate the guns too. Somewhere a boomer in the womb was complaining that the war had gone "woke."
I managed to find an old image online that shows what all this looked like back in the day.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
So this isn't the same anti-aircraft site, as evidenced by there being five guns aiming skyward, whereas this place only had four. But with the uniformity of the design it still provides a good insight into what this place would have looked like during the war. The gun pits are pretty much identical, and laid out in a semi-circle around the command bunker, just like this one.
The guns were most likely 3.7 inch anti-aircraft guns, capable of firing ten rounds a minute, reaching up to 28,000 feet. Each gun would have had a team of people working it. Even though the guns are long gone from this place, there is an identical site in London that still has a gun in place in one of the gun pits, while the others have been turned into animal enclosures in a petting zoo. I'll see if I can snap that up next time I'm down there and edit it into this blog to give an example of how it would have looked.
Alternatively, if you're ever down in London, look up Mudchute Farm. You'll see goats, llamas, and an anti-aircraft gun. What more could you want?
Of the four hexagonal gun pits here, this one is particularly cool, because while they might all look rather samey, this is the only one where it's still possible to see the rings in the floor where the gun was mounted.
It's all left to nature now, but I think it's important to think about the brave men and women who were stationed here, because by acting as a line of defense, they also made themselves a target. It must have been a scary job for that reason alone, but in addition to that, these people were operating under enormous pressure. When they saw a German plane flying overhead, they knew that if they failed to shoot it down, the city would get bombed and ordinary citizens would lose their homes, their businesses or their lives. That's a heavy responsibility.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
I'll just throw in this shot of a gun crew posing next to their gun, just to provide a sense of scale. These things were huge.
The four gun pits are in a semi-circle around a command post, which would have used a radar to track approaching German planes. Unfortunately the command post was so overgrown that I didn't even see it, which is a shame because battling foliage to get to something hidden is always fun, in a prickly ouch-my-life-hurts kinda way. But from what I've seen online, it's flooded with murky, stagnant water anyway. Still, I am kicking myself a bit for missing it.
But there are a couple of pillboxes that are worth a mooch!
I've written about pillboxes before, but for those who don't know, they're defense posts designed to fight off a ground assault, which was actually something that seemed pretty likely in the early years of the war. The Germans had taken France, and the UK seemed to be next on their agenda. Had the Germans invaded the UK, and targeted the anti-aircraft posts, the people working here would have shot at them from the relative safety of these pillboxes.
The interior of pillboxes get rather samey, and I've seen quite a few now. But this one has something rather awesome, and that is a hell of a lot of arachnids all in one fluffy clump.
These are leiobunum rotundum, a species of Harvester that fall under the arachnid umbrella but aren't actually spiders. Very much like how pigs are also mammals, but that doesn't make them human. Although sometimes admittedly it does get hard to smell the difference. Scorpions are also arachnids. It's a group term.
Leiobunum Rotundum don't make webs, but apparently they move in herds, because every surface of this pillbox is fucking covered in them.
What is it, mating season? Have I walked in on an arachnid orgy?
I can finally tick that off my bucket list.
Alas, none of them bit me. Leiobunum don't bite and have no venom glands. Gaining super powers stays on the bucket list for now.
Anyway, apologies for giving you nightmares. Let's check out the second pillbox, which should hopefully be less horrifying.
See? These things are horrifically samey.
Well this one has Harvesters too, but a closer look at the walls reveals some vintage graffiti from 1944. It's quite fain but I think it is legit, because the first line of the text reads "HAA Battery," which was the official name for a place like this, HAA standing for "Heavy Anti-Aircraft." I seriously doubt the local chavs would know that. It's also written in pencil, while the more modern graffiti is scratched into the walls.
It's so cool that decades ago, the people stationed here decided to sign their names and it's still here. By October 1944, it was fairly obvious that the Germans were losing the war. Even the Germans knew it. More than 20,000 of them were court-martialed for defeatism in 1944, and the German air force chief of staff had killed himself. It stands to reason that maybe the folks manning the anti-aircraft battery had a feeling that soon they'd be clocking out for the last time.
Apologies for the second helping of nightmare fuel. One place remains, and that is apparently the air raid shelter.
Aaaand this is where things get a little more disturbing. There seems to be a horse skeleton lying on the ground. I can honestly say this discovery is a first for me.
It's a full fucking horse too! The leg bones are still attached and the hoof is still on the end.
And then there's this colossal fucking rib cage still attached to the spine. It seems that the horse wandered down here and couldn't get out.
Onto the second room...
There's another horse in the second room, albeit a smaller one and not as well preserved. The ribs are snapped and scattered all over the floor.
Having said that, the presence of two horses down here makes the whole thing a bit more ominous. One horse, I can get. Animals do wander off to die if they get ill, but the presence of two down here makes me wonder if they were led down here and left.
A quick search online revealed that the RSPCA had investigated cases of horse neglect in the area around 2014. Apparently two horses were being kept in abysmal conditions, and nobody seemed to know who their owner was. Perhaps this is the same two horses.
Either way, it's really sad and kinda evil. Perhaps all the fly-tipping in the entrances to the air raid shelter were designed to stop people discovering how the horses had been disposed of, or to stop the horses getting out. But then the question is, why would someone do that?
There's a rope here which I suspect was used to lead the horses in. It's all very grim and pretty depressing.
But here we have some zombie spiders! I spoke about them before on my Cancer Laboratory blog. Basically these two helpless spiders have succumbed to a fungus called Engyodontium Aranearum, which gradually consumes the spider and leaves it in a fluffy mess. It seems that the Cellar Spider, Pholcus Phalangioides, is particularly vulnerable to the fungus, purely because their legs have more leg joints than other spiders, which means they had to evolve a thinner exo-skeleton so that they could actually function. The fungus exploits the thinner exo-skeleton.
It's pretty grim. What a way to go, slowly consumed by white fluff just because you have the wrong number of knees. But then that sounds a bit better than being lured into an air raid shelter by your human owner and then barricaded in and left to starve to death. Poor horses.
Anyway, that's all I've got. But to conclude, dead horses aside, I personally find it kinda humbling to be in a place like this. In the 1940s this place would have been a hive of activity, and those who worked here knew that if they failed, civilians would die. Not only that but they no doubt provided a certain peace of mind for anyone who lived locally. If they heard the guns fire, they felt a little bit more safe.
In the 21st Century, we don't really appreciate how shit things were for our ancestors, but if it wasn't for their efforts during this era, we wouldn't be here at all.
And on that depressing note, let's wrap it up. My next blog will be another military thingie with no dead horses, and then I'm doing a couple of derelict cottages. It's all pretty riveting.
Anyway, to get regular updates on the blog, follow my social media! Somehow my Instagram reach is shrinking rapidly even as my followers increase so I really can't promise you'll get any updates there, but I also use Facebook, Vero and Reddit. I sometimes use Twitter and Threads too if I can be arsed. Check them all out.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment