Gruinard Island looks peaceful enough today but in 1942 it was a different story. The small island sits quietly in Gruinard Bay halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool without causing much of a fuss, but when top MoD boffins from the Porton Down military research laboratory in Wiltshire wanted a quiet spot to test their new weapons it suddenly became hot property.

As the Second World War escalated, there was a worry that the Germans would attack Britain with germ warfare. Gruinard Island was deemed far enough away from anywhere important to be used as a testing ground for the anthrax bacterium. It is fatal in 95% of cases when ingested - not something to be messed with. So this innocent piece of land became Scotland’s top secret ‘Anthrax Island’.

As part of the experiment, 60 sheep were penned up and exposed to anthrax-infected bombs. Within three days they were dropping like flies and the scientists had the proof they needed. The plan was for anthrax to play a part in Operation Vegetarian - a deadly programme designed to cause maximum damage. Linseed cakes contaminated with anthrax would be air dropped over Germany. The cattle would ingest the spores and contaminate the meat supply, killing swathes of German citizens in the process.

Thankfully that particular scenario didn’t come to pass. The linseed cakes were incinerated at the end of the war, but it was too late for the Gruinard locals. The island was abandoned and covered in ‘Keep out’ signs. Everyone did until 1986 when an English company was brought in to decontaminate the land. It took 280 tonnes of formaldehyde to do the trick. The topsoil was removed in sealed containers and a test flock of sheep was sent over to graze on the island once again. When there were no ill effects the island was declared open again.

Today, there are no outward signs that anything happened. It’s a particularly scenic and sleepy part of the country. Round the coast, there are more visible wartime relics with the concrete gun emplacements and memorial at Aultbea. Gruinard’s only recent claim to fame has been Private Eye’s suggestion that Guardian typesetters, famous for their misprints, should retire here.

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Posted by Anne on August 25, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tanks rumble across No Man’s Land, submarines patrol the sea, soldiers stand guard and munitions workers labour day and night - all in stained glass. They feature in three of the windows in St Mary’s Church, which, together with a stone cross, constitute Swaffham Prior’s unique memorial to World War I.

Created in 1919, the windows were designed by CP Allix; local squire, church benefactor and a man apparently fascinated with machines. The windows have lots of small scenes, each accompanied by Biblical texts, some of which seem rather laboured, as if they have been levered in to justify the images.

The first one starts with a barrage balloon floating among the stars while searchlights comb the sky and a tank roams the plains. Not the sort of thing you usually see in churches. Under a biplane flying though glassy blue skies is the text ‘Though they climb up to heaven thence will I bring them down.’ Was Biggles an agent of the Almighty in his battles with the Red Baron? As they stack up the shells they‘ve made, female munitions workers are encouraged by ‘Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with your might.’

The fascination with technology is undimmed in the second window - ‘Though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea thence will I command the serpent’ accompanies a fantastic painting of a submarine, complete with riveted sections, periscopes and a complex rudder mechanism. On the surface a ship steams along happily, but not for long… now you see it sinking under the waves, where you can also admire four different types of mine.

After that the belligerence starts to lessen. Hospital nurses help casualties and, elsewhere in the world British engineers build a pipeline to bring water to the desert. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour like thyself’ is the inspiring text for an illustration of what seems to be a YMCA shelter – surely the world’s ONLY instance of this organisation appearing in sacred art?

The final window extols the benefits of peace. There are bright scenes of sheep grazing, men ploughing fields, women gathering crops and so on. It’s all very nice and cheery but you can just tell his heart wasn’t in it, or perhaps there just wasn’t enough technology to interest him. If only the Massey Ferguson and the mechanised milking parlour had been invented in time to liven up those pastoral idylls.

Continue reading "Swaffham Prior war memorial, Cambridgeshire" »

Posted by Lucy on May 23, 2009 | Permalink

I think most people would agree that a great deal of nonsense is spoken in public houses. Combining the power of speech with the consumption of alcohol is normally an effective barrier to sensible conversation. The more you drink the greater your propensity to hear and spout total nonsense. Yet it was whilst propping up a bar in Soho that I was first told about a Soviet T34 tank parked up on waste ground in Bermondsey, just a stones throw from the Old Kent Road. Thinking that my companion was a little too well oiled from the Belgian import he was drinking my initial reaction was a furrowed brow and a disbelieving arch of the eyebrows. An armour plated piece of the Red Army dumped in South London? My internal urban myth alarm sounded loudly. I speculated as to who had put it there, Del Boy perhaps? The whole story sounded far too much like a plotline from an episode of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ to have any chance of being true. My drinking buddy gamely assured me that his tale was genuine, but when he told me that I would find the tank on ‘Mandela Way’, I assumed that only a right ‘plonker’ would believe such an unlikely story.

I’m not sure what I expected when I turned up on Mandela Way a few days later. Perhaps a man in a sheep skin coat, puffing on a cigar selling tickets to see the largest piece of Cold War memorabilia in SE1? Unlikely, as anyone touting for tourist trade in this part of town would face a tough job. Tower Bridge may only be a twenty minute walk away, but by the time you reach the incessant buzz of traffic on the Old Kent Road, the manicured visitor delights of central London have surrendered to the much more earthy charms on offer in the ‘Sarf’. A triangular piece of scrub ground deep in the heart of western capitalism is certainly an odd resting place for a machine which once sought to champion a socialist utopia. With a row of humble Victorian terraced houses to the north and the bleak prefabricated expanse of a trading estate to the east, the tank sits on a decidedly incongruous corner of the capital. Indeed the comrades who put this particular T34 together must have thought that the only way its caterpillar tracks would ever grace the streets of London would be during a victory parade. In actual fact it was to be the combination of a film company, British eccentricity and a planning dispute which succeeded where Marxist Leninist dogma failed.

When movie crews descended on Battersea Power station in the mid 90s to film an updated version of Richard III they needed some serious firepower. The swords and horses of Shakespeare’s time were to be replaced with more destructive modern weapons. Tanks were needed and one of the vehicles delivered was an ageing T34 tank recently imported from a rapidly decommissioning Russian army in Czechoslovakia. Unlike the make believe action of the film set, this particular tank had seen real service during the Prague spring of 1968 when Soviet troops rolled into the Czech capital to crush the revolting students. After the film, the T34 went to a scrap metal dealer from whom in 1995 it was bought by property developer Russell Gray as a gift for his seven year old son. Even fully deactivated a 35 tonne tank does seem a rather excessive present for one so young and it would seem that Mr Gray had an ulterior motive in mind. Soon after the purchase the T34 was installed on land owned by him at the corner of Pages Walk and Mandela Way, a plot on which he had recently lost a planning battle with Southwark Council. According to one (possibly apocryphal) story Mr Gray had by then secured permission to place a ‘tank’ on the land, although the council thought he meant one of the ‘septic’ variety. Whether there is any truth in that wonderful tale, it is evident the authorities are powerless to prevent the storage of vehicles on the land as the tank has remained in the same spot for the last thirteen years, with, if local rumour is to be believed, its gun barrel deliberately aimed toward the council offices.

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Posted by Maurice on July 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Britain is littered with bizarre features that would never have existed were it not for heavy capital investment in the defence of the Realm. Whilst schools and hospitals compete against each other - and private business - for public funding, one must question whether Britain’s military spending is fully justified. During the current illegal and counter-productive conflict, I have often momentarily thought not - until astonishing legacies of military activity have presented themselves before me. These revelations have been numerous, and come always without disappointment.

The Gosport peninsula, a triangular area of land enclosing the western side of Portsmouth Harbour, is particularly rich in such things. Impressive derelict forts that have never seen action, a large aircraft hangar with no runways, old town ramparts, a ‘secret’ military intelligence school, a submarine escape training water-tower and a vast Georgian military hospital. These are just a few of the wonders on offer. All can be enjoyed by the casual onlooker more for the queries that they pose than any assurances that they might deliver.

Many military structures have a highly attractive pointlessness. They are neither useful nor decorative. This obviously provides great interest and value to the aesthete. The structure pictured here, which I have taken the liberty of fondly naming the ‘Browndown Mushroom’, is a perfect example. A brutal concrete fabrication, some twenty-five feet tall, it stands isolated on the extensive shingle beach that is Browndown Military Training Area. Perhaps some kind of vent, the mushroom’s gills are of steel mesh - and it is definitely not a platform. Its original purpose a total mystery, this entity has the power to perplex, impress and amuse all at once. Whilst delighting in such things, one can be absolutely satisfied that corpulent military spending should never be challenged.

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Posted by David P on January 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (8)

“It’s bigger than you think” proclaims the sign as you enter the Air Defence Radar Museum at RAF Neatishead in Norfolk. And indeed it is. We stopped by for a quick visit and came out two hours later. It turns out there's a lot to know about radar, and the museum staff (ex-RAF to a man) are only too glad to help you learn.

The museum traces the history of radar from early experiments like the sound mirrors still standing on the Kent coast, through Chain Home (the ring of coastal radar stations built by the British before and during World War II) to today's more sophisticated systems. RAF Neatishead is significant for radar enthusiasts (of which there are many) because it was home to the first secret defence system, built in 1941. It continued as a Sector Operations centre until 1993, protecting Britain through the nuclear threat of the Cold War.

The equipment used during World War II seems amazingly primitive. The Plotting Room (the room where they push things around with those big rake-type things) is staffed by dummy WAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). One thing the museum makes clear is women’s contribution to this end of the war effort. While the men were out fighting the women did their bit managing the information coming in over radar – plane positions, weather conditions. They counted them all out and counted fewer back. The museum shows complicated systems of charts, boards and obscure terminology. It must have been a demanding, relentless line of work.

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Posted by Anne on January 06, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ibsley Control Tower combines so much that is of interest to those appreciative of atmosphere. Ibsley was a very busy RAF airfield in the last proper war. It was the location for a morale-boosting wartime movie starring David Niven, and was taken over by the Americans in 1943. Ibsley played a major role in the D-Day invasion. It survived for precious few years, the airfield having been lost, almost entirely, to gravel abstraction. All that is left is a ruined and forlorn watch office (control tower) surrounded by lakes, now known as Mockbeggar Lakes, with wooded islands.

There is undeniable atmosphere, and a definite sense of foreboding due to graffiti and drug-related litter suggesting regular use as a rendezvous for illicit nocturnal activity - which seems all the more strange when one considers the affluent and respectable New Forest village setting. Looking closely at the daubed and battered walls it is just possible to make out three forces' sweethearts painted by US airmen. Well meaning plans to save and restore the building have come to nothing and, unfortunately, its complete demise seems imminent. Ibsley Tower is on private land belonging to the gravel company, but its isolation and neglect would suggest that trespass for the sake of curiosity is unlikely to be a problem.

It can be viewed lawfully from the north-western most corner of Fir Walk, public access woodland a quarter of a mile to the south of the village of Mockbeggar, which itself is just off the A338, about two miles north of Ringwood.

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Posted by David P on December 07, 2007 | Permalink

From the outside, this doesn't look like a place of worship. The small, corrugated iron hut is pretty anonymous but the crucifix on the door marks it as special. Inside the drab exterior there is an ornate world of wonder. Simple wooden pews face a beautifully decorated altar. There are religious statues on both sides and numerous brightly-coloured ornaments. If you look closely you can see that they’re hand-made, the best example being the Blue Peter-style chandelier made from tinsel and coathangers, still going strong after 60 years service.

This chapel was built by Ukrainian prisoners of war who were sent here in 1947. Between 420 and 450 men were imprisoned in Rimini and sent to Scotland instead of being sent home where they would have been tried as traitors and faced almost certain death. They arrived in Glasgow wearing German uniforms, and came to Happendon Lodge near Motherwell, then Carstairs before landing up in the camp at Hallmuir, 3 miles outside Lockerbie in the Scottish Borders.

90% of the men were farmers so the Ministry of Agriculture gave them jobs on the local land. One man, Mr Fallat, bought some fruit seeds from Italy and planted an orchard that still stands to this day. Inside the church they were just as creative. The landowner, Sir John Buchanan Jardine gave them this small hut and after humble beginnings they began to decorate it as a home from home. On the high altar is a model of their local Ukranian cathedral, carved with a pen knife. It was made from memory as the Russians destroyed the real one. The candlesticks beside it are made from shell casings and the standards surrounding the arch from a tent brought over from Rimini. For a place decorated in a time of austerity it's wonderfully cheerful.

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Posted by Anne on November 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The blue bereted soldier inspected our documentation from behind stylish, slightly sinister, wrap around sun glasses of the type often favoured by sports competitors and the military. His movements were lacklustre, those of a man bored by the monotony of sentry duty, and, judging by the insignia on his United Nations uniform, I suspected that he would rather be enjoying vodka back in his native Poland, instead of standing guard in the heat of the Holy Lands. Satisfied that the dramatic swirls, peaks and troughs of the Arabic script correctly accompanied the ministry of interior stamps he handed the papers back to our driver and, with a casual nod of the head, signalled his approval for us to proceed. As we edged forward, Ali punctuated the front seat silence he had cultivated since we left our hotel with a single word, ‘Golan’. He then gestured westward toward the verdant hills in the near distance. This would be where our road from Damascus would hit a dead end; any progress blocked by barbed wire, minefields and beyond that the Israeli army.

On the 10th of June 1967 the six day war was in its final stages. In just over 130 hours Israeli forces had defeated the military opposition offered by Egypt, Jordan and Syria with a series of brilliantly planned pre-emptive attacks. Citing the fear of an imminent assault by Arab forces, politicians in Tel Aviv had gambled on striking first in order to destroy the forces which encircled them. The level of their success out stripped their wildest dreams as Israeli troops quickly captured Jerusalem and the Sinai desert, decimating the Egyptian and Jordanian militaries in the process. By 8.30am on the final day Syrian forces were being engaged on the border and by mid morning the Golan Heights had been taken.

As a general rule I have found that men carrying Kalashnikovs rarely smile, and the balding member of the Syrian intelligence agency who halted us at the next checkpoint, proved to be no exception. Once again our papers were taken for close inspection but this time upon their return we also received an extra passenger in the form of an official government ‘minder’, who would accompany us for the remainder of the journey. Wearing a regulation black leather jacket, steady frown and perma-stubble, our new travelling companion instantly made his presence felt by berating Ali for announcing that we would soon be arriving at the ‘Israeli border’. Our enraged escort spun round from his seat to tell us that our driver was talking nonsense, in truth we would soon be visiting Israeli occupied Syria. My wife gave me a wide eyed look which suggested that, as usual, I had succeeded in ‘taking her to all the best places’.

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Posted by Maurice on August 18, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ever since the ingenious subterranean and tree top protests of environmentalists failed to halt the extension of the A34, Newbury has become an easy place to bypass. Traffic now speeds past its western edge with a consistent urgency, but with the defeat of the anti-road campaigners in the late 90s the town lost its national notoriety as well a few hundred acres of woodland. Unless you are a horse racing enthusiast or a Vodafone employee (the town is the world HQ for the company) there is little to tempt the casual passer-by onto the streets. The place is perfectly nice while being simultaneously perfectly undistinguished. Given this ordinariness, it’s peculiar to think that just over twenty years ago this sleepy part of Berkshire was a prime target for Soviet nuclear missiles.

What prompted Kremlin military planners to consider the total obliteration of Newbury is to be found a couple of miles to the south east of the town. Greenham Common is now a vast open space full of dog walkers, ramblers and the occasional cow but in the mid 80s it housed a huge military airbase and was one the most guarded places in the UK. The security was necessitated by the decision of Maggie Thatcher’s Conservative government, to allow American Cruise missiles to be located on British soil. These weapons were designed to neutralise the threat posed by Soviet SS-20 missiles which had been deployed in the mid 70s and were perceived to have upset the precarious nuclear balance of the Cold War. The first of the ninety six bombs housed at the base, arrived in November 1983. They were stored in six enormous purpose built underground shelters. Hundreds of anti-nuclear campaigners were on hand to greet the delivery and give notice that they had no intention of leaving the base in peace.

Today nature has reclaimed much of the Common, although remnants of the old base are still visible. The control tower, which once guided in vast military transport planes, is intact, but up close appears disappointingly small. It oversees the remains of the runway which is discernable only as an unnaturally flat stretch of grass which splits the centre of the Common. Pieces of military machinery, so imbedded they must be immovable, still punctuate areas which once would have accommodated taxiing aircraft.

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Posted by Maurice on February 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I must have driven past the turning for the A4180 a couple of hundred times before finally flicking the indicators and directing my car away from the terminally busy lanes of the A40. Previously my desire to either get to, or escape from, the congested delights of London had always persuaded me to speed past the west and east bound road signs which point towards Yeading and Ruislip respectively. Yet, delightful as these towns may well be, it was the words Polish War Memorial, emblazoned in white capitals across the top of the metal rectangle which always tempted me to deviate off course. I was intrigued as to what sort of a monument would warrant such a grandiose notice and always imagined that the post-war government in Warsaw had commissioned some brutal piece of communist commemoration to sit in capitalist Britain. So, cruising up the slip road, I twisted my neck searching for a memorial of Soviet proportions, all shards of concrete and square jawed figures, striking determined poses.

When I drew up alongside the monument I realised that my socialist fantasy had gotten the better of me. The structure which remembers the 2,165 Polish airmen killed during WWII is the work not of bureaucrats but rather surviving comrades who sought to build the memorial soon after the armistice in 1945. The Polish air force association commissioned Miecystam Lubelski, a craftsman recently released form a Nazi labour camp, to construct the memorial and his plan exudes gravitas through simple design. A set of small iron gates lead to a needle of Portland stone fronted by a shallow pond and flanked by two low walls. On top of the central column is a bronze eagle, symbol of the Polish air force, and to the rear a sunken half moon walkway is inscribed with the names of the fallen as well the insignia of long disbanded squadrons. Despite its proximity to a busy roundabout, and given that the dead end approach road is used as a car park, the memorial manages to radiate a serenity which succeeds in blocking out the distractions which surround it.

Continue reading "Polish War Memorial, Northolt" »

Posted by Maurice on October 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Scotland’s Secret Bunker is near St. Andrews, Fife and it’s exactly the place to visit if Scotland’s weather turns momentarily inclement. You laugh at the irony of all the large signs pointing at Scotland’s Secret Bunker, you park at an unprepossessing farmhouse, near a slightly miscellaneous collection of military vehicles, you pay your fee, pass the barrier and a long, sloping tunnel leads you down into the cheap, paranoid world of the 70s.

Built in the 1950s as a safe place for government bigwigs from Edinburgh to hold Cold War pow-wows, the bunker is 40m underground. The air is purified to weed out radioactivity, gas and biological warfare and can be refrigerated/heated, ozonated/deozonated, humidified and de-humidified - whatever that means. There are so called "hot beds" in the 6 dormitories, more luxurious accomodation for the ministers, an RAF control room, and the piece-de-resistance, a telephone switchboard with 2,800 outside lines enclosed in a "Faraday cage" which is built to withstand an atomic blast. And if the red telephone should ring, there's a BBC Sound Studio for broadcasting the news of a nuclear strike to lesser-protected mortals in the outside world.

All in all, it’s an intriguing place which you expect to feel like a museum but which actually brings out a few thoughts and fears you might not have wanted to have on holiday. The slight half-heartedness of the dressed-up dummies manning the consoles and computers seems to suit the collection of shabby technology which must, once, have been state of the art, and which we presumably relied on. Part of you can’t imagine the idea that a bureaucracy would hide down here while the rest of us fried, but the bureaucracy itself seems oddly quaint; the Minister of State has generously appointed quarters, the scientific advisors have white coats and pipes, the typing’s all done by female secretaries, the café has nice checked tablecloths. One tends to think of nuclear war has something big, dramatic and American, either Dr Strangelove or some sc-fi fantasy; but this place evokes the apocalypse as administered by Reggie Perrin.

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Posted by Russell on June 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)