More information : The barbed wire enclosure is centred at TR 0817 2169, and extends across an area measuring 223m NNW to SSE and 75m WSW to ENE. The eastern side of the enclosure is straight, as it is formed by the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (Monument Number 1357333). The remainder of the enclosure is formed by an irregularly-shaped, single line of barbed wire. It is possible that this barbed wire enclosure may have been the site of the anti aircraft battery recorded 50m to the north-west on the basis of documentary evidence (Monument Number 1478121), although this is unclear.
Three bomb craters are visible within the barbed wire enclosure, and one just to the north. They all lie just to the west of the railway line. They are unusual in appearance for bomb craters in that they consist of a round mound with a hole or depression in the top. It is thought that a comparatively small bomb might have caused this effect in the loose shingle characteristic of this area; by a small explosion at the point of impact causing the shingle to be upcast into a circular bank around the small central crater. This is however, also speculation, and it is also possible that the shingle was banked-up to conceal structures such as land mines.
A stretch of contemporary anti-invasion scaffolding (Monument Number 1533928) extends inland from this enclosure towards the sound mirrors at Denge (Monument Number 462809). The barbed wire and bomb craters were all visible on vertical aerial photographs of 1946. By the time of the next available vertical aerial photograph of 1959, the barbed wire had been removed, and the bomb craters levelled and filled-in (1-2). |