Second World War Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low radar station, 'Dengie', Grange Road (EHER 21300)

Now destroyed. The site of a Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low (CD/CHL) radar station at Dengie. It was built by the British Army to monitor shipping and aircraft during the Second World War. CD/CHL sites opened from 1941. The site was upgraded by the Royal Air Force in 1942 and fitted with centimetric radar to become a Chain Home Extra Low (CHEL) station, called site K140. By the 1980s the station had been removed and all that remained was an aerial base at TM 0000 0310.

December 2008. World War Two Defences in Maldon survey: desktop research and site visit. During World War Two there was a radar station on the East side of Grange Road where the road turns sharply southwards. The Royal Air Force Air Defence Radar Museum records that it held a Type 54 detectional radar. The station name was ‘Dengie’. <1> <2> ‘Radarpages’ website states, ‘The Type 54 was an S-band radar used to detect low flying targets. It started its life as an Army coastal defence (CD) radar used to detect coastal shipping. The narrow beam width produced by the parabolic antenna was ideal for detecting low flying aircraft close to the coast that were flying below the cover of the CH [chain home] and CHL [chain home low] radars’. <3> Aerial photographs from August 1945 show the site clearly. The shadow of the 200 foot tower can be seen with about 10 huts, Nissen and pitched-roof, around it. The Nissen huts, five of them, paralleled the road. <4> <5> By June 1960, the site had been almost completely cleared and returned to agriculture, just the four concrete mounting blocks for the tower remaining to be seen. <6> During a site visit in 2008, these mounting blocks still remain. They are 5ft square, 16 inches high, with four large bolts projecting out of the flat surface. These are 20 inches apart, 6 inches tall. One of the mounting blocks has been partly demolished. <7> Four photos of site. <8> April 2025. Google Earth. The mounting blocks are still visible on Google Earth imagery. <9> NRHE data transfer: A Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low station located at Dengie (TM 000 030), called site M140. Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low (CD/CHL) radar stations were operated by the British Army to detect shipping and aircraft. CD/CHL sites opened from 1941 and comprised either a Nissen hut or brick/concrete operations block with an aerial gantry mounted on the roof and a separate standby set house for the reserve power. Staff were billeted where possible, but some stations had a small layout of domestic hutting situated within one mile of the site. From 1942 CD/CHL sites were combined with the Royal Air Force's Chain Home Low (CHL) sites to form one system of low-cover radar under the control of the RAF. These selected stations were upgraded with centimetric radars to become the K-series of Chain Home Extra Low (CHEL) stations. This improvement in radar technology meant that fewer stations were needed to give the same coverage and as a result many CHL and CD/CHL stations not upgraded were closed. <10> Aerial photography from 1981 shows that one aerial base survives at TM 0000 0310. <11>