NHER 11883 (Monument record) - World War Two searchlight emplacement at Hemsby

Ring ditch on St Joseph's air photographs, now destroyed.
Information from A. Lawson (NAU).

May 1955.
When site visited by Charles Green (NCM) this was visible from road but on surface not so. Around 62m (70 feet) diameter on south facing slope. A. Lawson (NAU) in (S1) quotes [1] as stating this ring ditch may correspond with placename 'Sepgrave'.
See (S1) and (S2).
E. Rose (NAU), 7 July 1986.

July 1946. RAF air photograph.
Shows circular banked structure which may be gun emplacement or searchlight position, with buildings to south. 150m to west, further structures include small gun emplacements indicate a more complex military site.
B. Cushion (NLA) 9 June 1999.

February 2006. Norfolk NMP.
The features described above, and in NHER 13810, are part of a World War Two searchlight battery which is visible on aerial photographs taken from 1940 onwards (S3)-(S5), centred at TG 4993 1708. (The structures and gun emplacements described above as lying 150m to the west are part of a World War Two military camp recorded as NHER 27370.) There is no evidence on the consulted aerial photographs that a Bronze Age ring ditch or round barrow was located here.

The site is first visible on an oblique aerial photograph taken in August 1940 (S3), but it has been mapped from photographs taken in 1944-5 (S4)-(S5), by which time it may have already been partially dismantled. It consisted of a large emplacement, presumably for the light, at TG 4994 1709. It was the levelled remains of this emplacement that produced the cropmark of a ring ditch visible on later aerial photographs, e.g. (S6). What appears to be a group of three conjoined emplacements, set into a concrete base or perhaps an area of scarred or embanked ground, is visible at TG 4996 1703. These probably held the predictor and guns to protect against ground and aerial attack, as referred to in NHER 13810. Another earthwork emplacement stood at TG 5000 1701. A possible concrete structure at TG 5000 1703 may have been a pillbox; a ditch visible to its southwest may have been a slit trench. A line of five huts is visible between TG 4994 1704 and TG 4988 1703. At least some of these had a curved or polygonal profile in section and may have been Nissen huts. A concrete structure or building stood at TG 4987 1703. These buildings probably included accommodation huts, operations buildings and a generator house. An embankment at TG 4988 1712 may have enclosed some kind of structure. All of the earthworks and structures described above lay within an area of uncultivated ground, the extent of which has been mapped. Other features, including tracks and patches of disturbed ground, are visible within this area but have not been mapped either because they are not clear enough to define or because they would obscure other elements of the mapping. There is no evidence on recent aerial photographs of the site (S7) that any element of the battery now survives above ground.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 6 February 2006.