UKH

On the 1:25k map of Glentye Hill in the Ochils there are a couple of weird 3 pronged shapes marked. They are at NN 840023 and NN 845031. Anyone know what they are? Something to do with the military and the Atlantic wall?

Weird.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g227126-d8281368-Reviews-At...
and
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=103051
suggest you're right.

This has been a nice puzzle for the morning. Thanks! 

I haven't had a proper look (satellite imagery may help!) But my gut reaction is that they are sheep folds of a sort. Sometimes a farmer will have 'sections' in the fold for dividing particular sheep etc.

I don't know though and would love a proper answer if anyone knows. 

Have a fab day!

BB

Here you go, Canmore has most man made objects cataloged.

https://canmore.org.uk/site/277399/glentye-hill

Thanks! Yes, military training purposes. I wonder what purposes? Bunkers?

Patrick barker describes in The Unrembered Places (p89 onwards) these: built as a replica of The Atlantic Wall in 1943 for training / assessment in preparation on D-Day.

So the wall it's self is still visible up there. I presume these bits were maybe bunkers or lookouts or similar?

http://www.atlanticwalls.uk

To allow assault engineers and others to test / practice ways of overcoming the hardened defences that made up Germany's Atlantic Wall.

The raid on Dieppe, as well as many senior army officer's own experience against prepared defences in WW1 made the British very wary of simply throwing men against such positions. People like General Percy Hobart felt that every type of defence structure should be identified and a specific method of overcoming them developed. So the French resistance nicked the plans, replicas were built and experiments were done. 

The Americans were far less convinced as to the need of these specialised weapons but their experience on Omaha Beach showed how valuable they might have been.

On Google maps there's a 'Place Marker' for Sheriffmuir Atlantic Wall. Click on that and there are then lots of photographs of the various parts. Obviously more extensive than those marks on the OS map would suggest.

The big worry apparently was in finding out how to destroy mass concrete bunkers reinforced with steel bars. Clearly there's evidence that some of their experimenting at Sheriffmuir was successful by the amount of destruction and scars in both the concrete and steel.

Interesting stuff!

They are here on Google Maps:

https://goo.gl/maps/erjRf6i8UkdeDtEy9

also further possible different test fortifications further east?

and ..

https://goo.gl/maps/74joRV5QzXTwo82P9

Hobarts Funnies:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart's_Funnies

The pics via that link are great

Speaking as someone that lives in the most heavily-fortified part of the Atlantikwall I can say they don't resemble any genuine Atlantikwall structures in terms of their shape, so must be a convenient way of replicating defences to allow multiple attempts at breaching them in order to find the best way, i.e. each 'prong' is a replica of a particular defence.  The actual wall designs varied - some were the rounded walls like the one with the tank sat on in the atlanticswalls.uk link, others were plain flat-topped ones with a cross-section similar to that of a trig point https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlantikwall.co.uk... , and some were wave-shaped https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geograph.org.gg%2... . The latter is 12ft high and has some boulder problems on it https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/longis_wall-23306

The short section of wall north of the main wall in Scotland appears to be built to show 'tobruk pits' which were a feature of most bunkers for an observer position and built as standalone defences for machine guns or mortars.  Many in the Channel Islands had small turrets from captured French tanks fitted. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphot...

Its a fascinating site that I explored thoroughly in 1995 when I was at Stirling uni.  My understanding is that it was a testing site as well as a training one,  as weapons were developed to breach the Atlantic wall. One in particular struck me, it appeared that they had tried to shoot through the concrete with a machine gun, got about a foot in and given up. 

One of the weapons developed here was the Petard Spigot mortar, or 'Flying Dustbin' which did away with such refinements as being a shaped charge or being armour piercing in favour of just going bang, but in a really big way. I suspect something like this caused the spectacular main breach in the wall. Experience from WW1 was that such a charge going off might not actually breach an obstacle, but could undermine it, shift it, or render its occupants 'non-combat effective'... or turned to mush by blast if you prefer.  There is a famous example in Flanders of a pillbox intact, but upside down, after a very close blast from something big.

If you explore the site there are also lots of less obvious features, including a sunken bunker hidden below ground level, this is flooded and full of old barbed wire.  Up behind the site are numerous earth works and trenches.  Be careful to avoid rusty screw pickets, these are well hidden and could pierce a soft soled shoe, and I remember finding several 2 inch mortar smoke bombs, which I'm guessing are up there in abundance. (Functioned, but best left well alone)

It is well worth a quick look, especially as you are local. Sobering, both as a reminder of what was faced on D-Day, and the sheer power of High Explosive. But it also shows the scale of the preparations and logistics that went on in preparation for the invasion. All that effort, construction and destruction, was solely aimed at making one morning in history a success.

I think one of the key things we are in danger of forgetting is the unbelievable scale of the invasion of Normandy and the battles in western Europe. We have become used to 'wars' happening somewhere overseas whilst the rest of the country gets on with their normal lives.

But nearly every corner of the UK was impacted by D Day preparations - there's even a Mulberry Harbour section on the beach in Galloway. Round here, despite being miles from the south coast, there are plenty of signs of the preparations for D-day; the old quarries still have the sheds that were used as fuel and supply dumps,  there's bomb proof walls protecting the loading sidings and the main railway engine depot was only constructed in 1943 to cater for all the extra trains that were needed from the Northwest down to the Channel ports.

But few people recognise these things for what they are and some are regularly demolished to make way for 'progress'. Even the National Trust demolished the concrete bridge on the track to the Brackenclose climbing hut at Wasdale Head a few years ago. I was always told had been built by Italian prisoners of war, but why were they there? what were they doing ? what was the bridge for? When I questioned the NT they simply said it was unsightly and not strong enough. 

Thanks for all the information! Really interesting! I'm teaching navigation up there on Saturday so it's nice to have some of the knowledge up my sleeve. 🙂

Interesting post, thanks. In the village I grew up in there are two numbers painted on a long wall. Camouflaged by overhead trees this is where military vehicles lined up to wait before being transported across the channel. They get regularly repainted by someone. 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.9141359,-1.2658095,3a,75y,39.11h,79.69t/d...

You started a really fascinating thread there! I didn’t know any of this. Thanks!

Geograph has a few photos if you're interested:

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2675100
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2681019

There's a WWII underground oil pipeline crossing the Peak District that is still in use today.

Part of an original WWII 1600 mile fuel supply network called the Government Pipelines and Storage System (GPSS) 'to transfer the fuel eastwards and southwards from the west coast ports'.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLH_Pipeline_System

You can track the oil pipeline across the Peak District landscape by white gate/stiles and white posts.

For some reason that is a fantastic and poignant memorial to maintain.

Thanks! That's great! The link in the text to the dark secret is also cool! Another nav point to go after maybe! 😃

There are concrete plinths outside Brougham Hall near Eamont bridge on which armoured vehicles parked.  These concrete structures can be seen all along the entry to the Lowther Holiday park  where tanks were marshalled.  An old chap I used to talk to in the Crown told me about fields full of tanks around Tirril with the crews living in the tanks and tarps on the run up to invasion - Askham Fell was a tank training area and I reckon there are some gun pits up there - unexploaded shells were found and exploded in the Loadpot hill area in the 90s.  And of course there was a Bailey bridge crossing the river on the estate.

And of course Warcop Ranges were used.  That's an interesting area - in the 70s there were still Churchill and Comets or Cromwells to be seen, used as targets, together with some quite large unexploded ordnance which we had to respect when we walked up through the ranges on to Mickle Fell on a school summer camp.

Brougham Hall was the secret development site for something called Canal Defence Light, which had nothing to do with defending canals. But it was an search light designed to illuminate a battlefield and blind the defenders at night mounted in an old tank in such a way the light was hard to knock out with small arms fire.  

I can remember reading an article about that in a modelling magazine when I was at school - iirc it used the strange and less than effective gun mount of the Sherman's predecessor, the M3. (No, just checked, I remembered incorrectly - there was a searchlight turret)

Strange to think of the top brass being at Brougham!  And of course during the Dark ages the future of Britain was decided at a peace conference at Eamont Bridge with some significant warlords present from Europe.

https://esmeraldamac.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/the-treaty-of-eamont-bridge-i...

The Peak is alive with WW2 remains and vestiges.  I have found loads of places and items the last being this graffiti carved into a small bridge over a brook by its German POW constructors from No58 POW camp Belper. You can just make out 'German POW camp Belper Great Britain No' (58)

There is a WW2 tank left in the Peak district too, I'll not disclose the location but it is a Canadian Ram, (M3 Sherman with a 6pdr gun) sans turret.  I don't think the location is a huge secret though. Its an interesting relic.

This is really interesting and I couldn't have been much more wrong!

Thanks for all the knowledgeable contributions guys.

Yes, I very often find that this is the best source of information around. For all this site has a lot of bickering etc, it also has very knowledgeable and interesting people!

In reply to

On Bing maps if you switch from OS map to Arial you can see the outline.

The south obviously had a great deal of activity. One area I'm familiar with is the New Forest. Not only did it have a number of airfields, it also had a bombing test range, Ashley Ranges:

https://newforestguide.uk/history/new-forest-explosives/ashley-walk-bombing...

This was where the first 'Grand Slam' bomb was dropped, although as an aerodynamic and penetration test only: it wasn't filled with Torpex...

Then there's the Canadian Memorial, where the Canadian troops bivvied in the forest gathered for services, prior to departure for Normandy.

I was supervising a DofE group near one of the former airfields  and had just met the group when I heard a Merlin engine, and looked up, pointing it out, to have a Spitfire appear through the gap in the trees. The group seemed impressed by my ability to identify the engine from the sound... One lad was Polish, so it was nice to talk about the Polish fighter squadrons based at the airfields. I think their route even went past the memorial.

It would be interesting to know the date for that.  Prisoners of War weren't used for labour so if it was built by Germans it was in the months after VE day when they were held as detainees until repatriation was effected later in 45 / 46. Waged working during this 'non combatant' phase was normal.

Of course that phase for the Italian POWs started from September 43 when Italy surrendered. These were the original occupants of Belper but would have been the first to be repatriated once safe passage could be provided after VE day and replaced by German detainees.

My uncle had two Italian POWs sent to work on his farm. He had to pay and feed them and they were an enormous help. But it was more than a two hour walk each way to and from the POW camp at the start and end of each day, so he asked the authorities if they could live in the loft of the hay barn. The commandant said yes and he heard nothing more from the powers that be until an official arrived nearly two years later and told them it was time to go home. The two Italians said 'no thanks' as they were more than happy with life on the farm and stayed until they died in retirement in the 1970s.

One thing that struck me when we explored the remnants was that there are all those failed attempts you mentioned, and then that one breach. I have a picture in my head of them watching that success and then "right boys, saddle up, we're off to Normandy"...

Not heard of it before but think I’ve just found it on bing maps😊

It certainly is.

Boulderers have been pulling on WWII bullet pock marks (weapons training) for years in the Burbage Valley!

Soldiers were billeted near Little Hucklow (got to know the old farmer there).

Bradwell was involved in WWII specialist military manufacturing, which then continued on post war (Newburgh Eng)

Further afield, POWs helped build a housing estate in Stocksbridge (Spinks Hall)! http://www.stocksbridge-council.co.uk/localhistory  (I found this out doing background research on a work project)

Not just bullets, over the years I've found PIAT and Bazooka projectile remains, 2 and 3 inch mortar bomb fins in Burbage and White Edge, and Blacker Bombard bits at Lawrencefield. As well as loads of 303, 9mm and 30 '06 cases and bullets. 

 Bradwell is an interesting spot, the steel tetrahedron as you drive out towards Tideswell is the remains of an Anti Tank obstacle, there was another across the road and a steel bar was threaded between the eyes on the top.  There was an AA battery at Coplow dale, the crumbling brick remains of the ammo storage buildings can still be seen in the fields. Also Netherwater farm was bombed, in fact a lot of random places were bombed, including Earl Sterndale, Fairfield just north of Buxton (possibly all misses from attempts to bomb the Harpur Hill storage facility) and Grenoside woods near Wharncliffe has a massive crater hidden from a 1000kg parachute mine which fell in Dec 1941. Believed to be a miss during a raid on Stocksbridge steelworks.

Great thread!

Last year, in between lockdowns I ran at a couple of orienteering events which included some WWII remains.  Britain's largest POW camp at Lodge Moor (Sheffield) - https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/lodge-moor-prisoner-of-war-camp-britain... and another at Skipwith Common which includes lots of remains of the RAF Bomber base of RAF Riccall - wonderful to be able to run around these areas taking in the faint echoes of recent history.

Coplow Dale is the one where I got to know the old farmer - he used have a field full of decaying old cars to take photos of   All now sadly cleared away.

He said troops were billeted there in war and yes, mentioned it got bombed as well.  I recall he thought the brick remains was the toilet block, lol.

Can see the old camp outlines on Google: https://goo.gl/maps/kr8ezXPB9wadG5jZ6

Perhaps the round features are the AA bases (or craters, !)

Some of the other bits I'm familiar with are sections of the GHQ Stop Lines, particularly in the Pang and Sulham valleys near Pangbourne. There are still large arrays of anti-tank defences, with clusters of large pill boxes intended to be tank killing zones. I just went for a walk one day, and discovered all this recent history...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHQ_Line

NIce. A more recent (albeit transitory) impact of history on the landscape is nearby too: https://goo.gl/maps/eXv2zSTaBZGe3t9MA 

SHN ? .... turns phone 180, lol.

The butcher in Stanhope in the 70s where I grew up was called Kaiser and had served in the German Army during WW1, remained here after being a prisoner and served in the Home Guard during WW2 after getting British citizenship post WW1

One of the local roadmen (Gordon Brown) came back from the war in Italy in the converted bomb bay of a Lancaster.  He still wore a beret at work.

There are extensive WW2 remains on the North York Moors too, including  decoy sites to mislead German bombers,  Tank firing ranges, mortar ranges, remains of german bombers, pill boxes all along the coast (if you've done the Cleveland way you've passed two or three).
Ammunition is still found on the moors quite often - I've found anti tank shells, piles of machine gun bullets and one live artillery shell sticking out of the peat!.  Although since the CROW act, a lot of the moors have again been swept for ordinance I guess there's plenty left.

Ever driven to Whitby from Sandsend?  Then you've driven right past a hidden concrete gun emplacement as you arrive on the edge of Whitby.

https://www.defenceofnorthyorkshireandcleveland.co.uk - an excellent resource,  If you live in North Yorkshire you can find lots, and lots of information, photographs etc., of various structures which still abound this area.  

That's really interesting! I used to see a lot of those pillboxes when I lived in Didcot and spent time walking in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Certainly I recall a lot along the Thames near Abingdon, which your link informs me is the red line. I never realised they were part of a greater strategy.

There's the obvious one still guarding the road up Dunmail Raise from the south.  They'd have needed a bit more than that to stop a Panzer Division though.  Lance Corporal Jones's rocket launcher at least ...

 A good many were part of a concerted plan, but there was also a great deal of leeway given to local authorities in the months after Dunkirk in May 1940 for local defence schemes. Along with the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers, building pillboxes, ditches and roadblocks was seen as a way to demonstrate that "all was not lost". The country was critically short of arms, tanks and aircraft so getting the population building defences with bricks and concrete (which were available) was good for morale.

But most pill boxes would simply have been death traps as they offered perilously little protection again tanks or field guns. And the idea that we were still going to be fighting a rear guard action to stop the Germans crossing Dunmail Raise in the Lake District makes me chuckle every time I drive over these days and see the pill box there. But they do illustrate the breadth of threats facing the country that weren't entirely irrational during that summer.  In addition to a Channel Crossing, a West coast invasion was possible if the Irish Republic sided with the Germans, as was a landing along the Moray Firth (tank traps still on the beach at Findhorn) once Norway had fallen.

For those just south of the Peak, the crater remaining from the Fauld Explosion is impressive for a visit. Doesn't quite get its own contour line but a fair wiki article. The former bomb store/preparation depot. Supposedly misuse of a copper-faced mallet to put fuses into bombs that were going out to Bomber Command for that night's raid ? There are certainly folk around to this day who remember the bang. 

Also the pill boxes marking the line of the Dove, which does make some sense as a defensive line. After all, there was one lot coming south a few hundred years earlier that stopped at Repton and got no further... 

Y

One of the ex-members of my club used to doss in that pill box at weekends, after he got banned for some unspeakable offence.  He said he got far more done than when he stayed at the hut.  No pleasure in the lie-in, i suppose!

A thoroughly good thread to read through.  There is a slightly  better aerial view of the area here.  For those still digging for data.

https://nakarte.me/#m=18/56.19898/-3.87031&l=E

I'd forgotten about Fauld; massive explosion.

Nice geology orientated paper on it here, worth a longer read: http://www.emgs.org.uk/files/local_geology/15(2)_fauld_crater.pdf

Wow, thanks. The crater is on one of my standard weekend runs - some great new perspectives there and I'll take a little more care to lookout for sinkholes and erratic chunks of gypsum in future... and now I know what that tall ugly concrete building is and why there are air shafts right over by Draycott... 

Great resource that, hours of fun papers to read. 

While it doesn't help answer this question it might help in future... I don't like BING (it's an awful web search) but it's brilliant for checking map stuff, use BING maps and you can switch between options for OS maps and Arial and compare. In this case you'd see the strange shapes on OS map correspond to what looks like broken stone or broken concrete or a long crumbled (or blown up) structure of some sort, which gives you a big clue to start investigations.  I've recently found the start to a "lost" and remote/obscure route, and someone's address from a photo of his garden (it was a challenge he made!) this way. A good resource for future.

You can also view (non-commercial use) old OS mapping at https://www.old-maps.co.uk