NHER 53646 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two features at Recreation Road and Parkside schools

June 2010. Norfolk NMP.
Various features of World War Two date, including air raid shelters, a slit trench and temporary structures, are visible as extant structures and earthworks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S2), centred at TG 2141 0836. They occupy what are now the sites of Recreation Road Infant School and, on the opposite side of the road, the Parkside School. Most appear to have been constructed during the war, after the bombing of the Teacher’s Training College, which stood on the Parkside School site, in the ‘Baedeker’ raids of 27-30 April 1942 (the ‘Norwich Blitz’). The huts (not mapped by NMP) erected after this date (compare (S3)) on the west side of Recreation Road presumably provided temporary accommodation for the students and teachers; a large, semi-sunken concrete building (mapped by NMP) on the east side of the road, on the site of the college’s bomb-destroyed main building, may also have provided accommodation, while perhaps also being somewhat protected from further bomb damage. What are likely to be the entrances to further, below-ground air raid shelters are visible to its north, with two or more further possible shelters visible as poorly-defined earth- and vegetation-covered mounds on the west side of Recreation Road (mapped as Extent of Area). The slit trench visible to the south of the former training college, to the east of the road, is of uncertain date (whether dug early or late in the war) and function (whether a genuine defence or dug merely for practice). It could even be of World War One date, as it has a World War One crenellated plan, but the ‘fresh’ appearance of the earthwork would suggest it dates to World War Two. There is potential for some elements of the site to relate to other World War Two sites in the vicinity, including the barrage balloon site on the recreation ground immediately to the west (NHER 53645).
S. Tremlett (NMP), 7 June 2010.