NHER 43304 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two road blocks on Boundary Road and Suffolk Road, Southtown

March 2006. Norfolk NMP.
A group of World War Two anti invasion defences is visible as extant structures on aerial photographs (S1)-(S3), centred at TG 5220 0615. They appear to have been sited to block the trackways that became Boundary Road and Suffolk Road. The westernmost element of the site was a group of four square anti tank blocks, located at TG 5217 0616. These blocked the trackway that became Boundary Road and lay immediately to the west of a former bridge across a large drain. Further concrete blocks lay to the southeast, at TG 5221 0612. These were arranged along each side of what is now Suffolk Road, again adjacent to a bridge across a drain. The road surface between the blocks was clearly different to the rest of the track; this almost certainly represents the presence of sockets to take anti tank vertical rails or ‘hairpins’. The extent of this area has been mapped by the NMP. To the north, at TG 5220 0618, a structure that had the appearance of a shed may have hidden a pillbox. A demolished pillbox of unknown type is recorded at this approximate location in a gazetteer of Norfolk’s defences (S4), many of the pillboxes identified in the surrounding area had similar camouflage (for example, NHER 32661 located 190m to the northwest), and pillboxes have been found in close proximity to road blocks elsewhere in Great Yarmouth (compare NHER 42353 165m to the southeast). By August 1945 (S5) all of the defences had been removed (further evidence that the ‘shed’ was probably camouflaging a military defence). There is no evidence on more recent aerial photographs of the site that any element of the World War Two defences still survives.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 8 March 2006.