NHER 43590 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two air raid shelter at 16 to 18 Alpha Road, Southtown

May 2006. Norfolk NMP.
A World War Two air raid shelter is visible as an earthwork on aerial photographs (S1)-(S4), centred at TG 5233 0571. It is both larger than a typical family-sized shelter (compare NHER 43587 45m to the northeast) and smaller than most public shelters (compare NHER 43300 255m to the southwest). It also appears to have been located on an industrial site: a factory or similar industrial building is visible immediately to its east. This suggests that it was an industrial shelter provided for workers at the site, and its size and form are comparable to other industrial shelters identified elsewhere at Great Yarmouth.

It consisted of an elongated earthwork mound, presumably covering a surface-level or semi-sunken structure which probably had a curved or parabolic shape in profile. An entrance is visible on the west side of its north end. Its northeast corner is obscured by vegetation. A second possible shelter is visible less than 10m to the west but this is indistinguishable from the remains of a building depicted on the Ordnance Survey 2nd edition 25 inch map (S5) and consequently has not been mapped by the NMP. More recent aerial photographs of the area, e.g. (S6), and modern Ordnance Survey maps demonstrate that the shelter has since been levelled and the site resurfaced and built over.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 8 May 2006.