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According to my mother, the buildings of Beechdale Primary School were the quarters attached to an ak ak site there. One building was brick built, the kitchen and canteen she said, and the others were wooden. The prefabs built after the war, now replaced, had anderson shelter type coal shed. In fact, if I remember correctly, Google Earth is showing pics of Beechdale Estate with the sheds still there today.

The guns spewed shells all over what is Bilborough now. The Grammar School had a shell hole in its grounds next to the top road and the playing fields. There was a wooded area off Glaisdale Drive that was littered with these holes. Great for rough riding on our bikes after school.

Ah, the famous Beechdale guns, was told about them many years ago by the Father in law

Rog

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I think this link should show you the one in the field next to the junction of Nottingham Road/Bank Hill and Mapperley Plains. It's at the very top on the left as you emerge onto Mapperley Plains. h

Hi, carrying on the theme of desperate innovations in the defence of our island’s security and when you may have thought that nothing could be less inviting than resisting the enemy whilst being encas

Hi Jane. If you're around Cambs are you aware of the reinforced main street through Cambridge. After Dunkirk we were reduced to more or less one small tank division positioned south of London. It was

Gone a bit off topic, to get back on anyone know any other ack ack sites? Dad said there was one on mapperley plains which used to shake our windows (nottingham rd new basford) sounded a bit of a distance to do that, but he should have known? have previously mentioned the road blocks/identity checkpoints at church st bridge old basford and at hucknall rd/arnold rd junction, but only in daylight hours (in case someone ran into them in the dark)

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  • 4 years later...

#52 ashley...................with ref' to ach,ach, sites, in the fifties we played in/on some concrete bunkers adjacent to Henry whipple/Padstow school, which i'm sure would have been used as a 'Battery',and the school football pitch was known as the 'camp pitch' indicating a POW or 'Army' site.Ive never read or heard any direct info on this,wonder if anyone can come up with an old map?........it was actualy sited between the top of Gainsford cres.and a famous Copse called 'Bendigoes' ring,after the famous bare knuckle fighter.

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There was an AA baterry just off Holme Lane, Lady Bay, My grandparents told me that when they were fired, the windows in their house on Trent Boulevard rattled.

That AA Battery was in the field across the road from 8 Holme Road, West Bridgford where my grandmother and her children, i.e. my mother, 3 aunts and an uncle lived.

Your grandparents were lucky, OLDACE...the war stories told always included the guns shaking the house when fired and the noise was as bad.

Not as bad though as the bombs that fell on that fateful night that the Blitz came to Nottingham....a stick of bombs fell short and 2-3 fell in the field opposite their house in a line leading directly to the Co-op Bakery.

Those explosions blew out all the front windows of their house but it was nothing compared to the results of the bombs that did fall on the Co-op.

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.with ref' to ack,ack, sites, in the fifties we played in/on some concrete bunkers adjacent to Henry whipple/Padstow school, which i'm sure would have been used as a 'Battery',and the school football pitch was known as the 'camp pitch' indicating a POW or 'Army' site.Ive never read or heard any direct info on this,wonder if anyone can come up with an old map?........it was actualy sited between the top of Gainsford cres.and a famous Copse called 'Bendigoes' ring,after the famous bare knuckle fighter.

Things you find when you aren't looking for them.......to save me explaining anything, I've left the caption from the book where I "borrowed" it.

bendigo.jpg

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Thanks cliff ton,............alot more trees when i knew it,i think its still there.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi, I'm new to this forum but have an avid interest in all Pillboxes but AWTs in particular. I am a member of the Pillbox Study Group (PSG) and would appreciate a little more info on this siting if you are willing. Have tried to contact you via PM but that failed. I appreciate that this is a an old post but would be grateful to establish contact with you either through this forum or the PM system.

Thanks in anticipation

Jan

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I remember there being a pillbox on the rough fields up the hill on the right of ArnoVale Road (the opposite side to the school) somewhere near Somersby Road in the early fifties. This was before all the houses were built in that area. Its foundations will be underneath someone's house or garden now, I expect.

Also, someone told me there is still a pillbox in a field along the Plains Road at the junction with Bank Hill.

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Unless they've shifted it there was a WWII brick built bunker/shelter in Papplewick, we played in, around and top of it for years. I can't really explain where it was as it's a long time ago but it was in a ditch (I think) in a field between the two Papplewick woods.

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Hi, I'm new to this forum but have an avid interest in all Pillboxes but AWTs in particular. I am a member of the Pillbox Study Group (PSG) and would appreciate a little more info on this siting if you are willing. Have tried to contact you via PM but that failed. I appreciate that this is a an old post but would be grateful to establish contact with you either through this forum or the PM system.

Who exactly are you referring to ? Is it poohbear who started the thread and is still a current member of the site, or someone else who may no longer be visiting us ?

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Hi all, many thanks for your responses to my debut on this forum - didn't expect to get a response so quick or by so many. The original question was to Firbeck as it was he who posted the info on the Allan Williams Turret in Finchingfield but am willing to talk with anyone who has any info on this one or any other. I must confess that I have only visited a slack handful of pillboxes in the Notts area as most of my 'hunting' grounds have been predominantly Cambs, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, though I have strayed further afield.

Cheers

Jan

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Also, someone told me there is still a pillbox in a field along the Plains Road at the junction with Bank Hill.

I think this link should show you the one in the field next to the junction of Nottingham Road/Bank Hill and Mapperley Plains. It's at the very top on the left as you emerge onto Mapperley Plains.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.0155103,-1.0987438,3a,15y,216.22h,86.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEdkmt9pm7IMxGK4HOFLNow!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

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Hi, carrying on the theme of desperate innovations in the defence of our island’s security and when you may have thought that nothing could be less inviting than resisting the enemy whilst being encased in an Allan Williams Turret then think again. Although there are no known examples of the AWT in Nottinghamshire and few others surviving nationwide, spare a thought for the poor soul who manned the Tett Turret, a far more diabolical invention comprising of a reinforced concrete turret, open at the top and mounted initially on a concrete sewer pipe. The brainchild of HL Tett and manufactured by Burbridge Builders of Surrey as a private venture Tetts were employed as part of airfield defences. Surviving examples are extremely rare with only eight evident nationwide. Six in various states of decay at RAF Hornchurch, Essex (now Hornchurch Country Park, turrets initially uncovered by Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver in the BBC series ‘Two Men in a Trench’) of which only four are still viewable the other two buried to protect and preserve them. Recently a further two were discovered at Docking in Norfolk, these are unusual as they are virtually intact, mounted on brick lined pits which are linked by a tunnel formed of concrete sewer pipes. These are the only known examples – unless someone knows different.

For your delectation the following images are from my own visits:

P1020430_zpslxknl9yh.jpg
Tett Turret 1 at ex-RAF Hornchurch

P1020454_zps7xqvsjbi.jpg
Tett Turret 2 at ex-RAF Hornchurch

P1020479_zps4ffgqqcb.jpg
Tett Turret 3 at ex-RAF Hornchurch

P1020500_zpsyrnc6erg.jpg
Tett Turret 4 at ex-RAF Hornchurch

P1080200_zpsqn1mm4zn.jpg
Tett Turret 1 at Docking

P1080203_zpsg4d6efmr.jpg
Tett Turret 2 at Docking

P1080192_zpslls6uvqu.jpg
Tunnel linking turrets at Docking - note the spur tunnel half way down on the left side

P1080187_zpsidffrlel.jpg
Entrance to tunnel from inside fighting compartment of turret

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This is very interesting stuff Jan and the first time I have seen a picture of one of those AWT's,I worked on the former RAF Woodhall site in Lincolnshire and we unearthed a Picket Hamilton fort complete with jacking mechanism,we managed to dig it out complete,cleaned it off and donated it to Thorpe camp just down the road in the village of Tattershall Thorpe,I have some pictures somewhere I can post if anyone interested,we also dug up an unexploded 500Kg German bomb but thats another story

Rog

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Stu, I've never seen a brick-built pillbox before. I think the ones I knew about were concrete and octagonal/hexagonal? certainly not square.

I remember there was just the roof of one on the sand dunes at Chapel St Leonard's which we used to play on in the late 1940s/ very early 50s. I suppose the rest of it was underneath the sand

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