More information : An anti aircraft battery of the Second World War period was seen and mapped from war-time air photographs. The anti aircraft battery was seen centred at NZ 2337 6093, at Lobley Hill, Gateshead. It included a command post, seven gun emplacements, all but one of them arranged to the south of the command post and two of them of a later type; another possible smaller gun emplacent, possibly for a Bofors gun on the east, and two magazines. More recent photography shows that the battery was destroyed by more recent building development. (1)
Documented in a gazetteer of Anti-Aircraft battery sites. (2)
A former local resident reports that in 1956 remains of anti aircraft battery installations including wooden huts and a gun mounting minus actual artillery pieces were still situated at the present site of Lobley Hill Youth and Community Centre on the South side of Scaffel Gardens. This is approximately 250 yards south of the nominal centre point of the site given in sources 1-2. The correspondent also recalled post -war civillian use of some wooden huts, one as a Sunday school in the 1950s, and another at a detached location in Lobley Hill Road, as the local library ino the 1960s. (3)
The actual dimensions of the site identified in source 1 are roughly 300 metres north-south by 200 metres east-west, with the huts being located to the south of the main battery area: thus the correspondent has identified southern elements of the battery already identified in source 1 that survived into the post-war period. (4)
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