NHER 42503 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two light anti aircraft battery at Great Yarmouth

February 2006. Norfolk NMP.
A World War Two light anti aircraft (LAA) emplacement and associated huts and structures are visible as structures, buildings and earthworks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S3), centred at TG 5172 0850. Its form is comparable to that of other LAA batteries identified at Great Yarmouth, for example NHER 27451 located approximately 700m to the northeast. The earliest consulted aerial photographs of the site were taken in March 1944 (S1), but it is more clearly visible on later aerial photographs (S2)-(S3). It consisted of an embanked and revetted LAA emplacement, located at TG 5170 0855, with several huts and other, unidentified structures visible to its southeast. The huts probably provided accommodation and other facilities for the battery’s garrison. Other huts located further to the southeast (at approximately TG 5178 0845) seem more likely to be non-military structures associated with the adjacent railway lines. A military site located 220m to the south (NHER 42504) is linked to the battery by a trackway and the two were presumably associated in some way.

No gun is visible within the emplacement on aerial photographs taken in July 1944 (S2) and the site may have already been decommissioned by this date. It was dismantled after the end of the war. It is possible that traces of the battery still remain at the site but they were not recognised on recent aerial photographs of the area, for example (S4).
S. Tremlett (NMP), 10 February 2006.