Site of Second World War 'Diver' Site No. K6, Walton Road, south of Birch Hall, Thorpe le Soken (EHER 17233)

Site of a Second World War heavy anti aircraft (Diver) battery. It is now an arable field.

WWII anti-aircraft battery; 'Diver' site and gun emplacements. Associated hut complex removed by 1950 when part of the site was still visible as a cropmark. A report compiled in 1996 from wartime documentation, lists the 'Diver' anti-aircraft gun sites in east Essex in summer/autumn 1944. Site No. K6, at Military Grid Reference M660407, is recorded on 24 November 1944 as being equipped with eight 3.7 inch Mk IIc guns manned by 136 Regiment 409 Battery. <5> An aerial photograph taken in July 1946 shows the area more clearly. The site was in a large open field on the NE corner of the junction of Walton Road and the track which leads to Birch Hall. The huts lay on the W side of the field, close to the track, with their guns further to the NE. Around 40 huts can be counted, most of them Nissen-type. The parch marks of eight gun positions can be seen in two rows of four one behind the other, around 100 yards away. In 2010, nothing now survives and the site has reverted to an open arable field. No new information from NRHE