NHER 19084 (Monument record) - World War Two Light Anti Aircraft Battery at Gorleston on Sea

April 1983. Visit. On railway embankment above north side Burgh Road, south end former Gorleston North station.
Pill box; concrete, polygonal.
E. Rose (NAU), April 1983.

Type 22 pillbox, demolished 1991. Bofors site in sidings to north.
See (S1).
D. Gurney (NLA) 17 November 1996.

July 2005. Norfolk NMP.
NMP mapping has led to the alteration of the central grid reference of the site from TG 5203 0522 to TG 5204 0539.

The Light Anti Aircraft Battery, equipped with a Bofors gun, and associated Type 22 pillbox described above are visible as a group of structures, buildings and earthworks on aerial photographs (S2), (S3), (S4), (S5) and (S6). The site comprises a variety of different elements, many of which are similar to those seen at other Light Anti Aircraft Battery sites identified at Great Yarmouth (e.g. NHER 27451).

The pillbox described above is visible at TG 5205 0524. Its rather confusing shape on aerial photographs taken in 1944, (S2) (S3) and (S4), suggests that it may have been camouflaged using paint, nets or some kind of superstructure, for example. A short distance to its east is a circular embankment, probably a small gun emplacement. These two defences command an important strategic position overlooking the railway bridge and Burgh Road. The Bofors gun emplacement is visible as an embanked rectilinear structure approximately 13.5m to the north of the pillbox. A cross shape, probably formed by the 'legs' of the gun mounting, can be seen within the emplacement on some of the photographs, e.g. (S2).

A group of structures visible to the east of the station buildings (centred around TG 5207 0536) may have provided on site accommodation for the battery crew and also perhaps storage for an on site magazine. They include two relatively large huts and an air raid shelter; the latter is visible as an elongated mound, presumably an earth covered structure, with an entrance at each end. Immediately to the south of these, a cluster of small huts and structures and a T shaped arrangement of what appears to be short lengths of fence and other small structures, may also have been part of the military site but could equally relate to the railway station.

Further to the north is a group of three structures. This comprises a circle of concrete or other light coloured paving material surrounding a structure (at TG 5205 0548), a small hut or other rectangular structure (at TG 5205 0547) and a square concrete pad with a small structure at its centre (at TG 5205 0545). The function of these is not known but their similarity to features mapped at another of the Great Yarmouth Light Anti Aircraft Batteries (NHER 27451) and the fact that the upstanding structures were removed before August 1945 (S5) suggests that they are associated with the military site. In contrast, structures visible to their north are not overtly military in origin and as they probably relate to the railway station they have not been mapped.

The perimeter of the site is protected by what appears to be a line of barbed wire. A change in the surface of Harfrey’s Road, where it passes under the railway bridge, may mark the site of a roadblock, but this was not clearly visible and consequently has not been mapped.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 14 July 2005.