As you will know I have put up the pics of High Mathernock. They are not brilliant and I hope to retake them when the weather is better however, they do hopefully show a couple of interesting items.
The more sites I visit the more I become aware that the designs vary quite considerably... I think we need a section to explain our findings rather than just rely on RCAHMS whose comments are usually vague.
Mathernock is entirely constructed of brick with concrete roofs. The gunsites, their shelters and the magazines relationships need to be explained as does the radar ramp viz a viz the cable channel in the Control Room floor.
Houston as you will see when I get round to it is entirely different again.
So far we have:- 1) The Larkfield /Bogside model 2) The Mathernock model 3) The Houston model 4) The Flatterton model.
By the way, RCAHMS has been at the pictures again. The 4 coloured pictures currently linked to the page were not there origianlly. When I put the mention of an RCAHMS picture on the page it was a fairly distant WW2 oblique from the SE. This is no longer there. I wish I had run off a print at the time.
The other question that has arisen is why has somone had the coloured pictures taken? Does someone have designs on the site? Part of Mathernock farm has been cleared for the building of a new house ( only 1 as far as I could tell) and the air raid shelter may not be there much longer so I am glad I recorded that.
I think we need a convention for numbering the guns - I am suggesting numbering clockwise from the left hand end of the horseshoe.
I also suggest that we label them Type L, Type M, Type H and Type F as above for convenience. Should we be giving a full description of each type on the individual page or should we link this into a generic page for all types of site?
I hope I am not being too nerdy and taking this too far but it seems to be an area of information that nobody else has bothered with.
Somehow I doubt that England only had one type of HAA Battery, it might be that several of the same type were built in the same area. Re the heightfinder etc. the Larkfield/Mamore/Bogside model operated on much the same way as the pits were on a higher level and connected to the Plotting Room by a flight of steps. I hope to do you a sketch of type L tonight. I'll leave on the relative dimensions. Actually drawing it out is the easy part it is adding the various bits of text that is the time consuming part. I am using a prog that came with the camera. It seems idiot proof and it allows you to place the text where you want very easily.
I am having problems trying to find good enough aerial to be able to determine the shape of the emplacements at Mathernock. It is certainly a strange design and the shape of the emplacements was not something I paid much attention to as I expected the aerial to take care of it. It might be a few weeks before I can get the info on this one.
My initial thoughts were that the shape had 16 sides ( with some missing to create the entrance ) whereas I now think it looks as if it has 12 sides. The fact that each emplacement only has 1 entrance is unusual and the integrated magazines must have been a pig the restock off of a lorry.
It doesn't appear to be 8 sided to me. I think it maybe 12 sided. There is the long side where the magazine is and then every shelter has its own wall and the gap in between seems to be a separate wall. Look at the photo of emplacement 4.
Matherock is a dodecagon with 2 sides missing for the entrance - went by today. Also noted that the air raid shelter in the farm garden has been removed.
I had a look round Ballymenach HAA Battery today - it is the same design as Mathernock but totaly intact except for the accomodation camp which is missing.
The control building seems the same to but being intact suggests that there has been more demolition at Mathernock than I first thought. It is in accord with the TV prog where the operators went up the steps to the heightfinder and rangefinder pits which makes sense of a set of steps that go nowhere at Mathernock. More later. It was badly flooded so I could not get inside. I think it is the same as Houston too.
Have you found the pictures of Ballymenach? Incredibly clean and intact brickwork it does not look as if it has been there since 1941. Have a look at the Control Building and compare with Mathernock. I think there has been a lot more demolition at Mathernock than I certainly thought.
Have you found the pictures of Ballymenach? Incredibly clean and intact brickwork it does not look as if it has been there since 1941. Have a look at the Control Building and compare with Mathernock. I think there has been a lot more demolition at Mathernock than I certainly thought.
Well, drawing Mathernock was a real challenge!! It is a very irregular dodecagon with 3 sides missing for the entrance. I only got the shape right (hopefully) by constructing it within a circle. I will bung it up on Picasa so that you can paste it into the page.
If you think a particular battery proves a fine example of the type, remember that linking to the page for it is no harder than typing [[AA Battery Ballymenach]] for example, and the same goes for any of the pics on their page, the pic link works on any other page, so the Ballymenach link (just as a for example) could be copied and pasted on the summary page if you wanted it there.
I know these can look like gobbledygook, but it's still more like English than html:
%lframe height=150px wikilink% Places the image on the left, in a frame, makes it 150 pixels high (and removes the little wikilink arrow that usually appears on external web links)
[[url of pic1 | url of pic2"Emplacement"]] the url of the pic is just the web address where the pic is: the first url is the location of the full size pic that appears when the framed image is clicked; they're separated by a pipe, the vertical bar | ; the second url is the location of the image that appears smaller inside the frame; the text between the "" appears when the mouse is over the image in the frame.
And yes, you could confuse folk by using two different pic urls here, so they get a different pic when they click on the smaller one! They needn't be the same.
| Emplacement detail[[<<]]Still looking almost new The stuff following the pipe after the closing square brackets is the caption that appears under the pic. The combination: [[<<]] is used only to force a linebreak. Without using this, caption just continue off to the right forever!
I went to look at Belllsmyre Battery today and it is an enigma. The gun emplacements are all type H except that the engine room entrances are at the other end but it has a type L semi buried control building complete with instrument pits.
Little if any of the site was ruined by road works from what I can see on the RCAHMS aerial pic. Nothing much remains of the accomodation camp although a revisit when the greenery has died off might be worthwhile. Pics to follw tomorrow.
The emplacements are of the type H and they seem to have documentation that they are cold war built 1952 or there abouts. This could be linked to Bellsmyre having the later number too. The rcahms photo taken in 1949 shows the four gun emplacements but not the Engine House nor the type L Control building that is there now. The site of the control building seems to be a large crater possibly surrounded with bushes. I can see no sign of any guns in the emplacements.
This throws a lot of suppositions up in the air!
Is this design an early coldwar design? Was there an earlier battery on the site of Bellsmyre that was demolished and replaced witha newer one? Did the same thing happen at Houston and should it have a later number designation.
The Approval is just a review on the first external link to an unseen url, and won't re-appear now that you're registered.
You only had one 'mistake', which I make all the time, and that was the second " (double quote) missing on the text after the address of the image. That piece of text pops up when the mouse is hovered over the pic, so is usually the same as the caption at the end, unless there's a wee extra bit of info to be noted, but not seen in the caption. If you look at the geograph pics used, you'll see the difference. I usually add the year, as it can be redundant in the visible caption.
Haven't read the '28' thread yet...
The idea of two batteries sound possible just on the anomalies already noted though. Obviously the numbering - which also means there's a missing World War II number. Then there's the RCAHMS grid reference I already referred to when writing up the page, as it's so far from the battery. I put it down to the camp, maybe there's a tie in with two batteries being located there. From your pics, there's also the buildings as you mentioned, with the extra ones being more gear for a Cold War installation.
Houston doesn't push the same buttons for me, BUT then again, I haven't walked on the ground.
----
If you look at the second (lower) row of buttons on the toolbar above the Text area when you are Editing a page on the Main Site, you'll find a that all the buttons there are customised for THIS site (the top row are standard ones for any site).
Hover your mouse over any of them, and there will be a popup description of what the button does.
Place your cursor on a line, then a click a button to see what it does.
They are mostly for my use (some of them will just look like nonsense) to save punching the same buttons time after time, but you should recognise the first two with the wee pic on them as empty lines for a left framed and a right framed image in a page. The next two just stick in the links that pull in the links to the Page links to geograph, caches etc, and to the Aerial maps.
You might never use them, but I thought I should mention them.
My poor old memory has no recollection of listing this for you before, but I can't believe I didn't fine it before, although I did uncover it while trawling for something quite different, so maybe not...
This a detailed report on Penketh 3.7" Heavy Anti Aircraft Battery (MY76), which was both a World War II HAA Battery AND a converted postwar battery.
The article has both pics and plans showing the detail of the two constructions, and what the various bits and bobs found on the site are, together with descriptions of the two emplacement variations, and their arc layouts on the ground. One of the striking features is the way that this installation has two distinct arcs, which are centred in different places, but intersect, and share/re-use a couple of early emplacements.
Anyway, if I didn't happen across it before, then it's a handy new source of info.
I have seen this before but not for some time, in fact since not long after discovering Sesco. It always confused me and it does today. The advent of good clear aerial does nothing to help either as the map of the site and the aerial do not match up. There are only 2 readily identifiable PW emplacements and 3 readily identifiable WWII emplacements plus another two areas of possible remains. One of them seems far too close to the two emplacements either side. The WWII emplacements are not of a type I have found up here (yet). Two of them clearly have engine houses built onto them and the third is obscured by trees so remains unknown. It might be that 2 of them had the engine houses added to bring them upto modern spec and were reused whereas the others were not reused. I shall have to study all the pics more closely.
Mind you it is a different situation from Bellsmyre where all have been torn down and replaced with the later type.
Another probelem is that the WWII Command Post doesn't conform to known Scottish designs either.
One of the striking features is the way that this installation has two distinct arcs, which are centred in different places, but intersect, and share/re-use a couple of early emplacements.
According to the plan, two of the old emplacements have become two of the new emplacements, so the other two would be abandoned (on the left using the map as they show it) and new ones added (to the right and top, again using the map as they show it).
It does seem to be very much a collection of bits, and I think you commented earlier that the English designs seem to differ from the Scottish, which makes a straight comparison harder. The English command post always give me the general feeling of having been built to be much more 'serious' than their Scottish counterparts, overall larger, maybe with more equipment, and more personnel running around.
I might advise that I wouldn't worry too much about the aerial view not being a corresponding match for the map. There's always the question of time difference between the creation of the two, with the printed item being slow to produce (that said, the aerial shots are anything up to 5 years old, with little given away as to their actual date). However, the real 'problem' (if that's the right word) is the lighting at the time the shot was taken, AND the sort of processing applied to the image (and all these images have been heavily processes, both to extract the best image, and to stretch and squeeze them to match the road map.
If you want an example of how items that are 100% clearly visible in one map version, and 100% absent in another, try comparing the detailed view of the features that appear on a site like ROF Bishopton. Some of the differences between the same places in VE and Google make you wonder if you really really are looking at the same point, as features appear and disappear between the two.
On further reflection the WWII emplacements at Penketh are type Ls and the postwar ones of course type Hs. Their map is in error as it shows more emplacements then there are or seemingly were.
This is going to mean that Bellsmyre and Houston and the Categorisation page need some attention in the near future.
I know you monitor several chatrooms. Are you a member of the Wemyss Bay one? I tried to join but it all went pearshaped for some reason. I was hoping to ask for information on both the HAA batteries because now we do not know whether the Cold War one was for 3.9in guns or 5 1/2 in guns. Information on whether the WWII one was brick or concrete would allow it to be categorised.
Puzzled now. How would you know the map is in error? The two emplacement arcs intersect, so there is a sum total greater than either war, or postwar would have had alone.
The mapping only shows three wartime positions (that could be an error), although we know there should have been a fourth, which does not appear, to the east of the wartime arc. Interestingly, this seems to apply to both paper and online maps (oh, maybe that's not really a surprise). The post war arc mixes with its predecessor, and is described as having 4 new 3.7" emplacements, and as re-using some of the WWII emplacements. but no number its given, or total for the revised site. In the intro text, postwar batteries are described as having from 2 to 8 emplacements, so they could all have been used, and still fallen within this.
No luck on Chatrooms, I don't monitor any, and keep well away now - even worse than Forums for folk taking the huff if asked to behave!
If you mean just Forums, then still no, I just go a-scouring or searching. If I've seen the WB one, I'm afraid I've also long forgotten it. If you drop a url, I'll look in.
I haven't managed to dredge any info over and above what's on the AA pages about Wemyss Bay, and believe me, I did try earlier in the year when creating the pages!
I always find it odd that some in deserted spots are completely razed, while others in populated places are left almost intact.
Have you had a look on 192, the imagery is crystal clear. It shows 2 post war type Hs and two WWI type Ls modified by the additon of engine rooms and another 2 abandoned WWII emplacements. There are fewer emplacements than shown on the map and on the aerial it is clear that there is not space for an additional emplacement where shown on the map.
I would hardly describe Wemyss Bay as a deserted spot particularly as they were demolished to allow the building of a housing estate.
For catching Apollo out with really old info:- Wemyss Bay!
Well caught with that one, when I first got the pointer to a Wemyss Bay battery, it was way off the mark, and I spent ages trawling the woods and fields in the area just the east of the road to the east of the housing estate - it bounded by a sort of wall/boundary to its east. I can't get it out of my mind after spending so long pouring over the aerial views.
The principle still holds even the location was naff. The ROC post at John'o'Groats is a burnt out and vandalised ruin right on the north coast of Scotland, while other posts, right beside the road in Ayrshire and easy to get to, remain untouched.
The 192 pic is good, see the Google for a reasonable comparison on Flashearth too, with the VE pretty rough.
I see the post war pair to the north, and the two converted WWII emplacements to the east of centre, but I only see one further WWII emplacement to the west - which may or may not be converted, since Mother Nature has inconsiderately grown a tree over the likely spot for the engine room, and left it place on all the alternative views. If you can see another WWII emplacement in the expected location to the west, which is completely bare in my imagery, then you're doing lots better than me
It's an intriguing view, with the various bits visible together. Infuriatingly, it's in a spot I could've said I'd drop into on the way past, as I used to drive past fairly close once or twice a year (with the advantage of being at someone else's cost). It's a pity there isn't a sort of reverse lookup, where you can pinpoint a building on the map and get told what it is, as there is clearly activity in the area too.
I have just noticed that RCAHMS have posted a set of 9 aerial photos of this site taken in 2007.
I visited this site today. It is certainly different from any other HAA Battery I have visited. The control building is of a different design as are both the 4 orriginal emplacments and the 2 later ones to the south. Pictures to follow
The ramp from the Control Building is a bit odd as rcahms says the radar was to the NW of the site. Could the ramp be a later addition for a more transportable radar transmitter/receiver?
I have added in the type C recently explored at Cardross (Murrays) and the newly named Type S being the large gun post war battery type. I think this concludes our extent of knowlege on this subject at present but further contributions are welcome as is the assistance of anyone who can convert the hand drawings into digital format.
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