WINTERTON BEACH DEFENCES
NORFOLK
by
STEVEN PARSONS
OS 134 / TG 4990 - 1980
Steve sent in these excellent examples of some of the more unusual anti-invasion structures still to be found around the countryside.
SPIGOT MORTAR BASE
This spigot mortar base can be found on the beach at WINTERTON.
This would most probably have been originally located on the cliff or at least above the high water mark. However, it is now most definately on the beach and gives us a fantastic insight into what the concrete base (normally buried ) actually looks like. Notice that the stainless steel mount on the top is still in good condition even though the structure regularly gets covered by the sea.
Nearby Steve found some `concrete` that had been `autographed` whilst it was still wet back in WWII.
PTE D. WELLS 18.9.41
PTE. RUSSELL 1941
Winterton was the site of a six inch gun battery in WW 2 using two Navy gun left over from WW 1 there was also batterys at Great Yarmouth to the south and Mundesley to the north. Not only was this part of the coast considered quite a high risk due to it facing towards occupied Europe but a series of sand banks off the coast made ideal channels of deep sheltered water for an invasion force to launch from.
There is no longer any sign of the Yarmouth batteries but the original base for the Winterton battery is now used as the foundation for a hotel called the Hermanus Holiday center grid reference TG 49-7 19-5.
I have had a chance to look around the hotel and there are a few signs still about - an old air vent that seem to serve no funtion to the modern hotel but the most exciting thing is a bar in the celler of the hotel which I believe by the nature of its constrution uses some of the original underground chambers of the battery though I can not at this time confirm this.
The site at Mundesley is still very complete and although you can no longer access the under ground chambers (They were bricked up about ten years ago the structures above ground are very intact the bolt stubs on the two gun mounts can be seen and with little work could soon be made to serve there original purpose again.
This battery is located at map No.
133 TG 31-4 36-8
behind a large disused hotel (which of interest was used by the gun crew in
the war.
Here now are two more photo's taken at Winterton the first shows the tank traps on the cliff top which in the other photo have the names written on them and the next show the result of sea erosion and some of the blocks that have now falen onto the beach.
You can see the nature of constuction of these block being built on rafts to give the strength. In this photo you can see in the top left the spigot base seen in the top of the page photo.
A NOTE ABOUT WINTERTON FROM OUR `LOOPHOLES` EDITOR
I thought you might like to know a little about Winterton in Norfolk during
the day the German Airforce used the Pleasure Beach Rollar Coaster in Great
Yarmouth as a landmark to then fly to Norwich and bomb the Railway sidings.
This became a problem after an amount of daytime raids, however it was decided
that when night time bombing started that the Germans should be helped to
NOT bomb Norwich. Winterton was set up as a night time decoy to serve as Great
Yarmouth and outside Norwich, Bramerton was set up as a decoy for the railway
sidings. As mentioned on the website Winterton has a Coastal Battery and several
other sites including pillboxes and spigot mortor bases there was also surposed
to be a POW Camp in the area during WWII. I thought you might like to know
this...
Regards
Alistair
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Steve is very much involved in re-enactment and belongs to a WW2 group called VERA .
The Victory in Europe Re-enactment Association.
At the moment he is the editor for the group news letter.
Please take the time to visit their excellent website at