NHER 27557 (Monument record) - Sites of probable World War Two air raid shelters on Seymour Avenue, Beatty Road, Perebrown Avenue and Fisher Avenue

May 2006. Norfolk NMP.
Thirteen probable air raid shelters dating to World War Two are visible as earthworks and structures on aerial photographs (S1), centred around TG 5268 0972. The shelters lay in the back gardens of houses on Seymour Avenue, Beatty Road, Perebrown Avenue and Fisher Avenue. This location, together with their small size, suggests that they were private shelters, each intended for the use of a particular household. Some are visible as earthwork mounds, each of which probably covered a small semi-sunken or surface-level structure. Judging by the shape of the mounds, at least some of the underlying structures had a curved shape in profile, often with a flat, vertical façade at one or both ends. They may have been Anderson shelters, or similar proprietary designs. The shelters at 8 Seymour Avenue and 4 Fisher Avenue each appear to have had an integral bank at one end; these were probably blast walls protecting their entrances. Other shelters are visible as small, rectangular, surface-level or semi-sunken structures, which are distinguished from ordinary outbuildings by their curved shape in profile. These may also have been Anderson shelters, but without their usual covering of earth. The one at 42 Perebrown Avenue, which had a façade at its southwest end that was higher and wider than the main body of the shelter, was almost certainly an Anderson, as this is a characteristic feature of shelters of this type. The northeast end of the shelter at 18 Seymour Avenue was probably reinforced by a masonry or concrete element. The larger, rectilinear structure visible in the garden of 43 Perebrown Avenue, which may have been partially covered with earth, probably represents a different type of shelter. Further shelters may have lain in other nearby gardens, such as that belonging to 4 Seymour Avenue, but nothing was convincing or clear enough on the consulted aerial photographs to warrant mapping. Conversely, the interpretation of some of the mapped features, at 71 Beatty Road for example, is open to question; they could instead have been garden vegetation or ordinary outbuildings. There is no evidence on more recent aerial photographs, e.g. (S2), or modern maps that any part of the mapped shelters now survives above ground and they were probably levelled soon after the end of the war.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 24 May 2006.