Raf Greatham Pillboxes

[jonney]

After the section posts at Greatham Creek I had a trip to Greatham itself. Today all that survives of the old raf station is 5 pillboxes and a few anti tank blocks, the main airfield is now owned and built on by chorus steel and some of the old buildings are used by the fire brigade. A very brief history is this...

RAF Greatham was an RAF base situated in Greatham, County Durham, England. Also known as RAF 'West Hartlepool', was located at Hartlepool (now in Cleveland) and was little more than a grass airstrip, a satellite station of RAF Thornaby. It was home to four of 403 Squadron's Spitfires from 19 June 1942 to 22 January 1943— operating forward from RAF Catterick. Little now remains, as the site was developed after the war by British Steel.

All the pillboxes are of the same design and the DoB has a spigot mortar reported but I searched the area for an hour trying to find it with no joy so I think it is no longer there...

Anti tank blocks S0006687

The block next to the bridge had bolts embedded in it so think it could have been part of a roadblock

Pillbox S0006707

pillbox S0006699 doesn't exist and by the looks of it never has and this is pillbox S0006706 which the DoB says is removed

This one is used as a hide by shooters

Pillbox S0006690
This one I couldn't gain access to because there was a horse in foal in the field and when I asked the landowner for access they said they would prefer it if I didn't but they were very polite about it which made a nice change

Pillbox S0006693

the shelf has been smashed out of this one

didn't recon much to the art work lol

And finally pillbox S0006689

someone's lost their jacket

thought this was quite fitting in the field next to one of the pillboxes

oh nearly forgot rain stopped play and on the way back I came across this type 23 but there was no way to get near it due to the new 8 foot high fencing - no ref number for this one on the DoB

Sorry it was pic heavy but that's them all from here

Thanks for looking
Jon

 

[night crawler]

Some great work there as usual jonney. Horse owners can be a bit funny sometimes especially when it comes to people with cameras, they have this suspicion your part of a ring photographing their horse for stealing. Some 15 year old idiot of the horse and hound forum started an anti Geograph campaign on facebook a while ago
which caused a lot of horse photos to be removed because of paranoid owners.
You could always ask if it is possible to revisit when the horses are not in the field. The last one must be assessable as the land is cultivated.

 

[muppet]

some nice work there jonney thought the poppy was apt thanks

 

[jonney]

NC the land that the last one is on was open until recently. It is on an industrial estate and the gates were padlocked I think they have done it to stop the pikeys camping on it