NHER 15989 (Monument record) - World War Two pillbox and spigot mortar emplacement at Thamesfield Way, Southtown

Pill box, concrete, octagonal.
Intended to guard railway junction? Still extant?
See photograph, taken in 1958, in (S1) (copy in file).
E. Rose (NAU) 1 April 1980.

Closer examination of the photograph in (S1) shows that in fact this is a brick clad Type 24, with longer face containing door facing southwest. Where (S2) marks allotments, the photograph shows long grass. It seems quite possible that this is in fact site NHER 32654, made to look nearer the railway by forshortening; but it is not impossible there were two such structures, one on site NHER 15989 now destroyed by construction of the western bypass.
E. Rose (NLA) 10 April 1997.

March 2006. Norfolk NMP.
NMP mapping has led to the alteration of the central grid reference of the site from TG 5170 0669 to TG 5171 0673.

The World War Two Type 24 pillbox described above and a previously unrecorded spigot mortar emplacement are visible as an extant building, structures and earthworks on aerial photographs (S3)-(S5). The earliest consulted aerial photographs on which the defences are visible were taken in 1944, e.g. (S3). At this time, the pillbox was covered with a superstructure, camouflaging it as a shed, but is later visible free of its disguise (see (S5)). Contrary to the description given above, the longer side of the pillbox (its rear) faced north. On the 1958 ground-level photograph of the site (S1), however, there does appear to have been a door in its southwest face, which would have been an unusual feature for such a structure (the doors are more usually found in the rear face). It is also clear from the consulted aerial photographs that this was a separate building to the pillbox 85m to the northeast, recorded as NHER 32654. The site is now occupied by the junction between Thamesfield Way and Pasteur Road; any trace of the World War Two defences was almost certainly levelled or removed during its construction.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 7th March 2006.