NHER 43684 (Monument record) - Site of probable World War Two air raid shelters on Beatty Road and Sturdee Avenue

May 2006. Norfolk NMP.
Ten probable air raid shelters dating to World War Two are visible as earthworks and structures on aerial photographs (S1), between TG 5281 0981 and TG 5281 0966. The shelters lay in the back gardens of houses on Sturdee Avenue and Beatty Road. This location, together with their small size, suggests that they were private shelters, each intended for the use of a particular household. Six 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. The mounds may have covered Anderson shelters, or similar proprietary designs. The shelter at 64 Beatty Road appears to have had a ventilation shaft or similar structure on its roof. The other four 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 two at 54 and 58 Sturdee Avenue, which had façades at either end that were higher and wider than the main body of the shelters, were almost certainly Andersons, as this is a characteristic feature of shelters of this type. Further shelters may have lain in other gardens along this street, but nothing was convincing or clear enough on the consulted aerial photographs to warrant mapping. There is no evidence on recent aerial photographs of the site, e.g. (S2), that any element of the mapped shelters still survives above ground. The sites of some of them may be occupied by sheds or similar outbuildings.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 24 May 2006.