Site of Second World War Alan-Williams turret, Grange Farm, Latchingdon (EHER 20636)

Now destroyed. Second World War documents record an 'Alan-Williams' turret (mis-transcribed as an A.L. Turret, where it should read A.W. Turret) at Grange Farm, though the exact location of the turret is not known. It is proposed to have been on the East side of a North-South hedge where soilmarks in a 1946 aerial photograph suggest an area of hedge clearance, perhaps for the associated storage chambers.

November 2002-January 2003. World War Two Defences in Maldon survey: site visit and desktop research Contemporary records state, '7 posts; Clearing hedges; Storage chambers; A. L. Turret. Grange Farm. Map ref. 342173 (Mil. Ed.)'. <1> The 'A.L. Turret' stated above is clearly a misprint for an A.W. or 'Alan-Williams' turret, a steel cupola set into the ground manned by two infantrymen with a machine-gun. Enquiries in the area have revealed no indication of its wartime location and it must therefore be presumed to have been uprooted for scrap many years ago. An aerial photograph taken in May 1946 shows a strip of land on the East side of a North-South hedge with a number of soil marks indicative of recent clearing. This may have been the site of the storage chambers, as it also conforms to the quoted MGR. In the absence of further evidence, the location of the Alan-Williams turret is taken to be the same as that of the soil marks, although this should be treated with some caution. <2> <3> Note: <3> cites the NGR TQ 8969 9884 as the location of the Alan-Williams turret, but this is to the North of Blackbarn Farm, which is small farm to the East of Grange Farm. Instead, the record has been re-mapped to the current location using evidence from the aerial photograph <2>. The area of hedge clearance to the East of the North-South hedge which is described by Nash as the proposed location has been interpreted to be the gap in the treeline immediately to the NE of the farm buildings at Grange Farm. Though it must be noted that this places the turret some distance from the road, and if we assume the turret was placed to support the road barrier EHER 20635, then the true location may have been further South.