NHER 53491 (Monument record) - Site of probable World War Two searchlight battery or bomb craters

April 2010. Norfolk NMP.
The site of a possible World War Two searchlight battery is visible as earthworks, cropmarks and soilmarks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S2), centred at TG 1054 0771. Only one principal emplacement is visible, with a smaller emplacement to its north; a third possible pit-like feature visible on the same alignment further to the north (at approximately TG 1053 0775) cannot be distinguished from the shadow cast and ‘disturbance’ caused by an adjacent tree. None of the other trappings typical of searchlight sites, such as tracks and rest huts, etc., are evident, although by the time that the photographs were taken in 1946, the site had clearly been out of use for at least one season of ploughing. It is also possible that small, presumably agricultural, structures depicted approximately 85m to the west on the Ordnance Survey 2nd edition 25 inch map (S3) were utilised, although there is no clear evidence of this. The site is unusual in that it is located only 1.5km to the east of what was probably a second searchlight battery (although described as a gun emplacement; NHER 33831), the earthworks of which were still unploughed in 1946. Whether this larger site replaced the one described here, or whether the interpretation of this site is wrong (it might instead represent bomb craters or gun emplacements) is not known.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 22 April 2010.