Norfolk Heritage Explorer

Location

Full description

Wartime building.
Shown on 1:10,000 Ordnance Survey map as amongst dunes, but after tidal scour of February 1996 this is now on the edge of the dunes just above high water mark.
Large rectangular building with flat concrete roof supported on iron girders. Built of bricks laid in English bond with door to west. Loopholes or windows are covered by concrete baffles or shutters, so that there was no direct light, only the base of the baffle being open, rather like a chimney cowling. Most of these have been broken. There is one to the north, two each to west and east and one to the south above a lower extension which has its own opening to the south. This extension is only entered from the main room and has a brick 'plinth' in the south-east corner and two sockets in the east wall. Function of building is a puzzle; was it some sort of listening post?
Sketch in file.
E. Rose (NLA), 4 March 1996.

Photograph in file.

A map of 1949 shows this as a 'searchlight house'. Local residents say it was a generator house.
Information from [1]. See letter in file.
D. Gurney(NLA), 28 December 2000.

(1) states that this is marked on a 1949 county council map as a searchlight station, and said locally to have been a generator house. The latter may be correct as for the smaller extension, but why should a searchlight battery need such a building with muffled windows?
E. Rose (NLA), 9 January 2001.

May-November 2004. Norfolk Rapid Coastal Zone Archaeological Survey.
Inter-tidal survey (Environmental Zone 22), Context 658:
The ruins of a building were recorded on the beach between TG 50052 19447 and TG 50087 19356. The debris included reinforced concrete fragments, sections of brick wall and individual bricks. Some of the bricks were stamped 'EASTWOODS 4PRESS'. It is probable that some of the material, if not all, came from a Second World War period building.
See assessment report (S1) for further details.
The associated archive has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.421).
J. Allen (NLA), 26 April 2005. Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 21 July 2019.

February 2006. Norfolk NMP.
The building described above was the generator or engine house for a World War Two Coastal Artillery Searchlight (CASL) Battery (NHER 42454), which was itself provided for the Emergency Coastal Battery (NHER 35863) which stood approximately 330m to the west. It is recorded in several documentary and bibliographic sources, the most significant of which is perhaps the Coastal Battery’s Fort Record Book (FRB), a plan from which is reproduced in Bird 1999 (S2). On this it is marked as ‘Engine Room’. It is also visible as an extant building (at approximately TG 5006 1942) on aerial photographs taken from 1944 onwards (S3)-(S5).
S. Tremlett (NMP), 1 February 2006.

Monument Types

• BATTERY ENGINE HOUSE (World War Two - 1939 AD to 1945 AD)
• COAST ARTILLERY SEARCHLIGHT (World War Two - 1939 AD to 1945 AD)
• ENGINE HOUSE (World War Two - 1939 AD to 1945 AD)
• GENERATOR HOUSE (World War Two - 1939 AD to 1945 AD)
• SEARCHLIGHT BATTERY (World War Two - 1939 AD to 1945 AD)

Associated Finds - none

Protected Status - none

Sources and further reading

Related records

Find out more...

• Parish Summary: Winterton on Sea (Parish Summary)