{"id":6460,"date":"2017-08-07T21:37:06","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T20:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/?p=6460"},"modified":"2025-10-17T15:08:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:08:52","slug":"henry-wills-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/henry-wills-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Wills Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Henry Wills seminal book Pillboxes, A study of U.K. defences 1940 is where much of the interest, there is today in pillboxes and other defences, really began. He wrote to over 200 newspapers all over the country. Responses were numerous and the first nationwide survey of surviving WWII defences got underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"848\" data-id=\"6462\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001-1024x848.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6462\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001-1024x848.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001-300x248.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001-768x636.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection025-001.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Those who wrote back to Mr Wills received survey cards as below in return and the data was compiled from these cards. As you can see from the letters above the work began in 1976 and the book was finally published in 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-3 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"646\" data-id=\"6463\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001-1024x646.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6463\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001-1024x646.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001-300x189.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001-768x484.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection026-001.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"654\" data-id=\"6461\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001-1024x654.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6461\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001-1024x654.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001-300x192.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001-768x491.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/mills-collection027-001.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51dNvcly7gL._SX372_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51dNvcly7gL._SX372_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Pillboxes &#8211; the book that started it all!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Henry Wills seminal book Pillboxes, A study of U.K. defences 1940 is where much of the interest, there is today in pillboxes and other defences, really began. He wrote to over 200 newspapers all over the country. Responses were numerous and the first nationwide survey of surviving WWII defences got underway. Those who wrote back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-mills-collection","8":"czr-hentry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk\/gazetteersubsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}