Site of Second World War Road Barrier, London Road, Great Clacton (EHER 21241)

Site of Second World War Road Barrier, now destroyed.

WWII Defence of Clacton survey Contemporary records state, ‘Road barrier (concrete blocks and sockets). London Road, nr. Evans and Nunn. Map ref. 618342’. (Mil. Ed) <1> Aerial photograph, 1948 London Road was the main approach into Clacton; local memory places Evans and Nunn on the north side of the road at TM 1722 1603. A pillbox (SMR 21242) stood on the south side of the road at TM 1717 1603, alongside the garden of No. 55. A low-level aerial photograph taken in July 1948 shows the probable site of the barrier from the re-surfacing mark across the road from where the anti-tank pimples had been removed. It ran from Nos. 57 and 59 directly across London Road to the houses on the far side. <2> The site was visited by Fred Nash in 2007. Nothing of the barrier or pillbox now survives although all the houses mentioned are still extant. <3> Interestingly, there is a wartime photograph of London Road apparently taken from the first-floor window of either No. 57 or 59. In the foreground, in the front garden, are a line of soldiers armed with rifles. On the pavement, possibly outside No. 61, about twenty military and civilian personnel watch the approach of vehicles. The caption, in ‘East Anglia 1941’, reads, ‘A party of war correspondents representing London evening newspapers visited Eastern Command in March and saw, among other things, troops of the 6th Northamptonshire Regiment manning a defence post in the front garden of a Clacton house’. The source of the photograph is given as the Imperial War Museum. <4>