Fnurban #42 Defending England : from Radar masts to Martello Towers

Amid the continuing heatwave, last week we had a day and a bit enjoying the sea breezes on the Suffolk coast.  Normally we might well have headed for Dunwich,  but the huge wildfire burning there made us think again, and we went for the Bawdsey/Felixstowe area. It's a nice stretch of coast and a bit less busy than places  like Aldeburgh and Southwold further North,  and it has the bonus of some military history,  too!    

Firstly,  there is the Bawdsey Radar Museum :  commemorating the fact that on  24th September 1937, RAF Bawdsey became the first fully operational Radar station in the world.  The previous year, the inventor of radar Robert Watson-Watt and his research team had taken over nearby  Bawdsey Manor estate as their base, and built the first set of transmitting and receiving masts there - the former being no less than 360 feet high! The station was the first of the 'Chain Home' installations built around the British coastline, which played such a vital role in the defence of the UK in the 1939-45 war, most  famously in the Battle of Britain in 1940. 

At Bawdsey, the 'transmitter block' building remains and has been made into a small museum - we had visited before, but since 2018 it has been completely refurbished and updated, to tell the story of the invention of radar, how it works, and the history of the Bawdsey site, which continued to be part of the air defence system until the 1990s,  and still has a radio mast belonging to HM Coastguard - albeit a mere 100 feet tall.  We paid a visit to the museum, which was interesting if not large - worth an hour or so of your time, I'd say, if you're in the area. I took a few (not brilliant, sorry!) pictures: 

  Here  is the transmitter block - heavily protected by sloping earthworks/concrete, the entrance passageway is between the earthworks and the building and feels a bit like walking along a WW1 trench, and the steel  main doors were apparently gas-proof.  The HM coastguard radio mast is only 1/3 of the height of the original radar masts, but gives you an idea - the 1937 masts were pretty much in the same place, with the transmitter block housing generators to power the radar transmitters.

 

Not a very good (sorry!) picture of the main display room; it did do a good job of telling the story of Radar and the history of the site, and there was inevitably an 'interactive' feature which allowed you to test your potential as a 1940s radar operator,  turning dials to work out the range and bearing of a 'blip' on a screen (essentially an oscilloscope trace )  - it turns out that most operators were women, as they were more proficient.   

You may already know that Watson-Watt was originally asked to look into the possibility of 'death ray' weapons to actually shoot down enemy aircraft, but suggested that it would be more practical to use radio transmissions to detect targets by bouncing the waves off them.  What I learned was that he and his colleagues actually went as far as to calculate the energy that a 'death ray' would require, and concluded that this would be greater than the total electrical energy that could be generated in the whole of Britain at the time! 

 Rather a prescient quote from H,G. Wells as far back as 1902 featured in the displays - along with the inevitable 'The Bomber Will Always Get Through' of Italian General Giulio Douhet. 

And one most historic  piece of 'kit' - this is a Cavity Magnetron,  the device which allowed radar sets to shrink from filling a room to being able to be carried on ships and aircraft. It's been described as 'the most important invention to come out of the second world war' and was important enough to be offered to the US by Britain in the Tizard Mission in 1940.  

 

We also spent some time at neighbouring Felixstowe (see below)  which gave us a distant view of Bawdsey Hall, where Watson-Watt had set up his research facility.

 Finally a picture from the museum guide booklet : a postwar view of the radar station, with the transmitter masts in a line at the back, and receiving masts nearer.  

 As it says in the caption, multiple aerial cables were strung between the transmitter towers, and engineers had to swing out between them (at 300 feet!)  to do maintenance - it must have been terrifying! 

After an immersion in the defence of Britain from Hitler in 1940,  we took a walk along the coast path from Bawdsey to nearby Shingle Street,  which featured an important feature of the defence of Britain from Napoleon in 1805.  Within a stretch of a couple of miles, we passed a total of four Martello Towers.   I'm sure readers of this blog will know the story of these - inspired by a Genoese fortificd tower on Corsica, the Torra di Mortella  which put up a stout defence against British attack in 1794, a chain of 103 of them was built between Aldeburgh, Suffolk and Seaford, Sussex between 1804 and 1812, when Britain was threatened with a French invasion.  Wikipedia says that  of the 103 built, 

Fifteen towers were demolished to enable the re-use of their masonry. The sea washed thirty away and the military destroyed four in experiments to test the effectiveness of the new rifled artillery. During the Second World War, some Martello towers returned to military service as observation platforms and firing platforms for anti-aircraft artillery. 

They were given code numbers ( on the south coast ) and letters (on the east coast), and a list of them is available on-line, so we could identify the towers we saw.   Hence I can tell you that these were as follows: 

(above and below)  Tower 'W' at East Lane, Bawdsey - handy for a free car park by the sea wall from which we started walking. 

 then a few hundred yards North,  we have Tower 'Y'  ( it seems there was yet another one, 'X', in between but long-demolished )  which turns out to be rather special : 

 

This one has been extensively refurbished as a luxury home:  It underwent transformation by architect Stuart Piercy of Piercy & Company in collaboration with Duncan Jackson of Billings Jackson Design in 2010 into a three-bedroom home, winning the RIBA Award that year in the process.  And it has recently been  sold  ( advertised on The Modern House, naturally ), with the asking price listed at £1.25m,   Here's a  picture of the interior  'borrowed'  from the estate agent's pages: 

 I was fascinated by that brick column and vaulting, and it turns out that this is original and is of course there to support  the roof, which needed to bear the weight of artillery pieces installed on top. Given that  the walls are about 3m thick too, you can see what a feat of engineering these things were.  I wonder if the new owner is 'in to' military history? 

Moving right along, again only a few hundred yards to the North we have  Tower 'Z' which may be my favourite,  I'm calling it the Smiley Martello 🙂 

 Not sure if this is occupied, though there is a modern exterior staircase for access. The structure on top looked like a 1940s pill box, so I am assuming this one was one of those re-purposed during WW2.  

 We ended our walk at Shingle Street, a small village with a polyglot collection of homes ( I suspect mostly holiday/second homes) built right on the shingle, a very pleasant place lacking only a pub or teashop!  And here we found  Tower 'AA' ,  which is another conversion to residential use, albeit probably not quite as recent or as snazzy as Tower Y.  I suspect that what with the thick (and curved)  walls and the massive interior brick column, any rooms inside the brick structure are quite small (and hard to furnish!), which means that the roof area provides the main living area, with a sun terrace and  wonderful views, of course. 

 

So within about 40 minutes walk we had ticked four towers - sadly I forgot to take a photo (which would have been easily done) showing all four in a line along the coast.  Still, a pleasant seaside walk (we sat on the beach for a few minutes near Shingle Street, and a saw a seal swim by) , with a nice bit of military history included.

That however is not quite the end of the story - we also dropped in at Felixstowe, where there are two more Martello towers..  Here is Tower  U ,  at Felixstowe Ferry :

and here is Tower T,  guarding Felixstowe's golf course

 

Phew!  Now assuming there are about 50 surviving Martello towers,  the Bawdsey/Felixstowe area is richly endowed with them, having six within a handful of miles (actually seven, there's another one we missed!).  It's interesting that at the time they were built, Felixstowe itself was still quite a small settlement, not the important port that it has since become. But as Wikipedia says,   The Felixstowe area as a whole provided a linchpin in England's defence, as proved in 1667 when Dutch soldiers landed near the Fludyers area and tried (unsuccessfully) in the Battle of Landguard Fort to capture Landguard Fort due to its strategic location.
Which reminds me that a visit to Landguard Fort should be on the list.. 

 I should add that there was a link between the Radar and the Martello Towers - my partner's father was an electrical engineer who worked on  naval radio and radar during the war and continued servicing radar on ships for the rest of his career. The naval/maritime  connection probably means he wasn't at Bawdsey, since that was an RAF establishment, but it was nice to learn a bit about radar, which became his career (sadly like so many of the wartime generation, he never talked about his experiences, so we know very little).  And  the Martellos? Well, we have a picture of him, probably taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s, in front of - you guessed it, a Martello tower.    

 

I do like this picture - everyone has some of these, don't they, with family members dressed rather formally while 'relaxing' at the seaside!  The past is a foreign country, indeed - or maybe it was just  a chilly Spring or Autumn day?    He did quite a lot of work at Felixstowe later, as it was a big port, and we did rather hope it might be one of the Felixstowe towers -  but from what we saw none of them matched the photo. So, we have only forty-odd more Martello towers to go and see, in our quest to work out where this picture was taken!   It's a very long shot, but does anyone reading this have a suggestion as to where it might be?   Note the line of beach huts and the groynes on the beach - it must be at a seaside resort rather than a piece of 'unspoiled' coastline.   Any suggestions welcome! 

In other hobby news, I've been plugging away at re-basing vintage Minifigs 25mm 7YW figures.Currently working on Russians, and eventually I should have six units of infantry (Line, Grenadiers and Pandours), and four cavalry (Hussars and Cossack lancers). I am hoping there are some guns and gunners lurking in the box of artillery from this collection, which might complete a nice 'pocket army', inspired by Norm Smith's examples on his Battlefields and Warriors blog. 

 

 

 

If all goes well, for my next post I'll be able to show the whole Russian force and its constituent units. I'd better get cracking with the PVA glue, MDF bases, green paint and making some flags! With another heatwave coming, I will probably be mostly indoors, so no excuses..  Until then , keep well everyone. 

Fnurban #28 Anarchy in Tottenham, 1909

Although my home is in Suffolk,  I am fortunate to get to spend some time in The Great Wen - specifically in the North-Eastern part of London. So I was  able to join a local guided walk yesterday,  on the 115th anniversary of the event known as 'The Tottenham Outrage'.  On 23rd January 1909, a pair of Jewish Latvian  radicals (labelled as 'Anarchists' by the media at the time) named Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus staged an armed robbery in Tottenham, stealing the weekly wages (about £80) of Schnurmann's India Rubber factory (where Hefeld had been briefly employed), just off the Tottenham High Road.  It so happened that the factory was also right opposite the Tottenham Police Station - hence the alarm was very quickly raised, and the robbers pursued.  A chase ensued, which lasted at least a couple of hours and covered about 6 miles, and which caused the deaths of four people, including both of the robbers, a Police Constable and a child, and the wounding or injury of at least 20 other people including seven policemen. 

Our walk followed (most of) the route of the chase, through part of Tottenham, onto the nearby marshes, and on towards Highams Park and Hale End, pausing at various points to mark the significant events along the way. First, the site of the actual robbery, at the gates of Schnurmann's factory, where the company car with chauffeur and a young wages clerk were set upon by the robbers. 

Site of the robbery...now a car park

 

... and the Police Station (centre left), right opposite!

It seems the robbers made off with the heavy bag of money, and were also carrying quite a lot of ammunition - it is reported that over the course of the chase they fired over 400 shots at their pursuers!  The factory owner and his staff apparently gave chase in their car, but at some point a bullet hit its radiator, immobilising it.  Police from the station of course joined the chase, but only after having to smash open their weapons cabinet, because no-one could find the key!  That was just the first incident in a series which seem to give the whole affair a semi-comical Keystone Cops aspect - I found myself picturing events like the chase sequence from one of their silent movie capers, complete with gunsmoke as weapons are wildly discharged.  But of course, the gunfire was all too real, and had tragic consequences.  

The first of those consequences happened by St Mary's church in Mitchley Road, N17: 

The first fatality - a 10-year-old child

Ten-year-old Ralph Joscelyne was a baker's delivery boy, caught in the crossfire and killed. The killers kept running towards Tottenham Marshes,  but  PC William Tyler took a shortcut and confronted them at the site of a refuse incinerator - he was also shot, and subsequently died.  The refuse facility site is currently being re-developed, but its original perimeter wall still bounds the road - for now, at least.

Site of PC Tyler's fatal wounding 

 

and memorial plaque on Tottenham Police Station

 

The killers reached the edge of the built-up area ( really the edge of London at the time ) and crossed the railway tracks via the rather wonderfully-named Carbuncle Passage (which follows the Carbuncle Stream, which even today is well-named, I feel) 

possibly the best street name in London..

 Having crossed the railway, the scene changed to the open spaces of Tottenham Marshes - still undeveloped today, 

onto the Marshes..

 

At one point on the marshes, the pursuit ran across the Chalk Footbridge - at this point, one PC Nicod got close enough to take aim with his Police issue Webley revolver, which misfired. The robbers returned fire (they carried more advanced weapons, Hefeld a .32 Browning automatic pistol,  Lepidus a 6.5mm Bergmann) and wounded Nicod  in the calf and thigh. 

Chalk Footbridge - where PC Nicod was wounded

We followed the course of the chase along the River Lea Navigation and around the perimeter of the Banbury Reservoir, but skipped (access not being easy, plus we needed a lunchbreak - the cafe of Sainsbury's Low Hall branch proved convenient)  possibly the most comedic part of the chase.  In 1909 Helfeld and Lepidus commandeered a No. 9 Tram on the Chingford Road,  forcing the conductor to drive it - pursued by a policemen in a commandeered pony and trap, until the unfortunate pony was shot down, and another tram full of police oficers! The fugitives then transferred to a horse-drawn milk cart, which they turned over, then hijacked a grocer's cart, but could not release the brakes!  Finally they abandoned that and continued on foot, along the River Ching,  but ended up cornered in a dead end by a railway bridge.  Lepidus climbed a fence to escape but Helfeld could not, and shot himself as the Police closed in - he died weeks later in hospital.

River Ching railway bridge - end of the line  for one fugitive

 

Jacob Lepidus  continued running, and holed up in a cottage next to the Royal Oak pub, where he was soon surrounded. After some further slapstick moments ( he may have tried to hide in the chimney(!),  and a policeman climbing a ladder had to rapidly descend when fired on ), finally the officers broke into the house and Lepidus died in an exchange of fire - it later transpired that he had taken his own life as the police broke into the room -  and so ended the chase.  The cottage is long gone, but the pub remains ( it had been rebuilt only in 1906 but is now probably the oldest building nearby ) and has a signboard with a decent potted history of the event. 

Royal Oak pub - the cottage was next door

  

 

The pub's information board

It was a drear January day, of course, and raining at the start, the weather forecast had not been good  (in between 'named' storms), but it dried and brightened up later, so the walking was OK, admittedly not through the most picturesque parts of NE London! But it was really very interesting to follow the route of the chase and try to picture  how events had unfolded in 1909.  

Various discussion points came up - especially the motivation of the attackers.  It seemed to us present that the money was perhaps not really the crux of the matter - why stage a robbery next to a police station, robbing people who would recognise you?  And carrying hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which must have been very heavy, on top of the money bag?   It seems quite possible that the aim was not to fund their political activities but perhaps to simply provoke a confrontation and draw attention to their cause - that of Jewish communities suffering Pogroms in their homelands under the  Czarist Russian regime.  They clearly were prepared to use extreme violence and did not value their own lives - does this reflect the sort of nihilistic/suicidal attitude that we have seen more recently in various actions by Al Queda/ISIS and other groups?   It seems the money bag was never recovered - did it end up in the cottage chimney, or in the river or marsh? One rumour was apparently that the grocer whose cart had been hijacked soon afterwards moved to rural Essex and opened his own shop  - had he applied the rule of 'finders keepers'?

Another point was the 'public participation' aspect  - it seems that many members of the public were willing to 'have a go' as the chase continued. From the very start, passers-by tried to intervene ( And several were shot, for their pains), one story says that a housewife threw potatoes at the fugitives! Also an 'eye-opener' was the number of members of the public who were able to produce a selection of weapons to join in the gunfights - it seems a fair number of residents had shotguns handy, and perhaps some local ex-army veterans ( with the Boer War only a few years in  the past ) may have had 'souvenir' weapons to hand. As the chase progressed onto the Marshes, a couple of gents who had been out hunting ducks were persuaded by the police to assist, and at least one of the robbers was wounded by shotgun pellets.  We worry about the level of gun and knife crimes in certain areas of London today ( hmm...including  Tottenham, perhaps? ) - but perhaps it wasn't so very different 115 years ago? It became a sort of running joke as our excellent walk leader stopped at various points to describe the events of the chase, and almost inevitably added to the list of 'joe public' appearing with various weaponry at every point! 

There is a good account of the event on Wikipedia :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Outrage   - well worth reading if this has interested you. But my memory was also  'nudged' by the story - I have been dimly aware of the events described for many years, and I realised that this was because I had read about it in a wargames magazine article! A little light internet searching established that this was 'Anarchy in the UK'  by Mike Bell, which had appeared in Duncan MacFarlane's Wargames World (annual  supplement to Wargames Illustrated )    number 1,  as far back as 1988!  It's even possible to download a pdf version of the magazine - free from the nice people at Wargames Illustrated using this link  https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Wargames-World-1.pdf

Perhaps even more interesting, Mike Bell's piece is actually a game, allowing us to wargame the events of January 1909, including a printable game board and pieces.  It's a gridded 'chase' game, appropriately enough, and as various squares are landed on or passed, events can be triggered and pursuers activated - reading through the details for each significant square in effect gives you the narrative of the real-life chase. It was  rather clever, I thought!  Does anyone out there remember this piece, and if so, has anyone actually played the game?    It reads pretty well, I suspect it could make an interesting game - now if you had suitable Edwardian period figures and vehicles in 28mm/40mm/54mm (anyone got a model tram?!) and say, a 6ft by 5ft table, the board could be modelled in 6-inch squares...  Could be almost 'local interest' if the SELWG show remains at its venue in Edmonton... Just a thought!!

All in all, a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable day, even if a tad cold and damp,  and thanks are due to the Leyton and Leytonstone Historical Society for organising the walk, and on the anniversary too! 

I hope this has been interesting, I really enjoyed the day and was inspired to post it  here having read several excellent 'local walk'  reports on Mr. Nundanket's  Horse and Musket Gaming blog - thanks for the idea, Chris!  

I hope to do some actual gaming, painting etc soon, honest folks! Hopefully more of that in the next post, until then keep well, everyone.