History …

This week I was going to write a blog post about Cory Doctorow’s new kickstarter and give a quick run down of Audible’s new royalty payments system (as far as I understand it, although they aren’t explaining it to anyone with any clarity because obviously, if they did, no-one would agree to it). Then I was going to show the obvious logic as to why my politics are what they are (original floating voter) and what I believe life for normal people should look like, ie not bankrupted by medical fees, everyone has the right to live with dignity, not demonising the vulnerable or patently harmless etc.

However, I haven’t really the time to do it justice in the time I have (10 minutes) and I really wanted to write something so instead I’m going to talk about history because it’s fun.

As a nipper I grew up on the downs, there were pillboxes and other defences all over the shop. I grew up wandering into these things. Mostly desolate, stuck on the top of hills, you could almost feel the weight of the concrete around you when you went into the narrow entrances. As a youngster I didn’t think much about them. They just were.

Spool forward a few years and younger folks have become interested in how Britain was to be defended should the Germans invade. Both my great uncles on Mum’s side were involved in this. Apparently they were going to pour fuel on the sea and set the surface of the water on fire should Operation Sea Lion go ahead and the Germans actually invade.

East Anglia, where I live, is quite flat while at the same time, the right side of Britain for easy access to the continent it was packed full of airfields. One such, Rougham, was near us. It was an airfield until relatively recently but is now, mostly, an industrial estate along with hundreds and hundreds of new houses.

However, round about the place, dotted in among the industrial units, factories and even the houses themselves,  old parts of the airfield remain, including buildings from WW2. There is also a place called Blackthorp Barns which was on the periphery of the old WW2 airfield. History nerd Mc(not so)Mini is fascinated with the defence of Britain, so suggested it was a good day to go there and search for remnants of WW2 buildings. He has an app and explained that there were some that still stood which were air raid shelters for people based at the airport.

Always up for a bit of historical nerdery, I went with him.

We were not disappointed. Armed with his online map and my google maps, we worked out that there were some Anderson air raid shelters for the staff in the woods near Blackthorp Barns.

We went, unsure as to whether we would be allowed in, to discover that the woods are open and criss crossed with paths for walking.

We found concrete plinths which were clearly the base of long gone nissan huts and to our amazement four in-tact air raid shelters.

These are clearly used as drinking dens by kids these days but originally it would have been part of what McSon tells me is an airfield dispersal site.

An airfield dispersal site was exactly what it says on the tin. One site of many dispersed around the airfield to make it harder to bomb the entire infrastructure with one hit. This one is where some of the living quarters were.

The shelters would normally have a brick well in front of them with steps that you went down to enter and one still had this, the others were simply down a steep slope. At the other end is an escape hatch.

In one we found evidence of a wall across it at some point, with a door. In all of them there had clearly been benches or possibly bunks mounted on bricks.

After a quick squiffy on t’interweb, McMini reckons that what we found was the blast shelters to accommodate the staff. These were called Stanton air raid shelters and were made by Stanton Ironworks in … yes, you guessed it … Stanton (quelle suprise). Each shelter would be paired with a couple of nissan huts with living quarters inside so the occupants could go there for shelter in an air raid.

We also hoped to see a command bunker on a nearby industrial estate so we left and headed back across the A14. On our way we happened on another group of airport buildings. We ventured into the periphery of a farm yard to take photos but didn’t want to go right inside without asking the farmer for permission. Still enough close enough to photograph and very interesting. McMini is still researching what those buildings were for but there were clearly a couple of aircraft hangers at the far end.

 

When we got to the area where the command bunker is sited we discovered that, unfortunately the land was fenced off, either because they were building next to it or because there were game birds in the woods in front of it. In case it was the latter, we decided not to go and find it without seeking permission first, so after a quick walk down what was clearly a taxiway of some description, we gave up on seeing that and came home.

On the way we saw some discarded? or possibly spare plane parts. The engine cowlings would make a great spa for nerds we reckoned!

All in all a splendidly nerdy afternoon. Helped by the fact McMini is a very knowledgeable and makes for great tour guide!