In the summer of 1940, Britain was preparing for the possibility that some of its own roads might have to be blocked and some bridges destroyed before an invading army could use them.
Concrete road barriers at Cheriton, Kent, 10th July 1940. An East Kent bus shelter converted into a pillbox can also be seen in the background.
Credit: War Office official photographer, Puttnam / Imperial War Museums. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
After Dunkirk, more than 300,000 Allied servicemen had been evacuated from France, though huge quantities of vehicles, weapons and equipment had been left behind. The speed of the German advance through western Europe had also caused real concern. By June, British planners were looking closely at how an enemy might move inland if troops managed to land.
On the 15th of June 1940, GHQ Home Forces issued instructions for inland anti-tank defences. Stop lines began to take shape across the country, using whatever the landscape already offered. Rivers, canals, railway embankments and marshy ground all had value. Anti-tank ditches filled gaps, pillboxes covered important points and roadblocks were prepared where existing routes cut through the defences.
Near Hoo St Werburgh in Kent, two concrete plinths still survive beside a track leading from Stoke Road. They were part of one of those roadblocks. The wider Hoo defences crossed the peninsula between the Thames and the Medway, and a wartime plan recorded sixty infantry pillboxes and eighteen anti-tank pillboxes around Lodge Hill and Chattenden.
Credit: Gaius Cornelius. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
What interested me while researching this was just how detailed some of the planning became. A road that had once seemed inconsequential suddenly became important because it created a way through a defensive line.
Norfolk gives us some of the clearest surviving evidence. At Bacton Gap on the north Norfolk coast, a Type 22 pillbox was built near the road junction, fourteen anti-tank blocks were placed along the low cliff and a ditch ran for about 350 metres. Three more blocks obstructed Beach Road.
Mundesley, Walcott and Salthouse were also heavily prepared for imminent invasion, with pillboxes, anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and positions covering the routes inland.
The same sort of planning appeared much further west. The Taunton Stop Line ran for roughly 48 miles from the north Somerset coast towards Seaton in Devon, with more than 300 pillboxes built along it during 1940. Canals, rivers and railway lines were incorporated into the route, then strengthened where necessary.
Bridges were another concern altogether. Axmouth Bridge in Devon was prepared for demolition, with a pillbox covering its approaches. At Blandford Forum in Dorset, road and railway bridges across the River Stour were also prepared for destruction, and roads could be cratered if needed.
Defensive thinking changed during the summer. Sir Alan Brooke replaced Sir Edmund Ironside as Commander-in-Chief Home Forces in July 1940 and placed greater emphasis on mobile reserves. Many of the fixed positions already built remained in place, however, and some of them continued to form part of Britain’s preparations for years afterwards.
The invasion thankfully never came. The ditches were later filled in, the steel obstacles were removed and most of the roadblocks disappeared. Concrete proved harder to get rid of.
That is why pieces of the 1940 defensive landscape can still be found beside roads, fields, waterways, footpaths and on beaches today.
Do you know of any surviving wartime defences near where you live?
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