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SeSco / Around the country / Mystery building north of Comrie
Posted by: Apollo, August 2, 2008, 2:06pm
I chanced across this pic of another mystery, this time located a little to the north of the village of Comre, and Cultybraggan PoW Camp - although I must add that I'm not implying any connection, simply locating the general area.

There's nothing listed in the usual sources, and nothing marked on current large scale mapping.
I don't know of the obvious answer is the right answer, and it has something to do with the British Resistance. While it's located in a fairly out of the way spot, as it appears now, it is not sufficiently well hidden to have served as a Zero Station as would have been used by members of the Auxiliary Unit.
If it was, then there would have been a back door (and we see a definite doot), an emergency exit so that the occupants would not become trapped, but the access would tend to have been by a ground based hatch, small and easily concealed when used often - this would have lain just off the path.
We're looking at something that is of the order of sixty years old, and may have been constructed there and backfilled to camouflage the works, and the years have eroded that covering to the stage we see today.
Certainly intriguing.
Posted by: the_historian, August 2, 2008, 3:42pm; Reply: 1
There's something almost identical near Crail, on a farm called Ragfield. Difference with the Crail one is that it is surounded by a network of ditches and sluices, and there is a building with the remains of pedestals for engines.
Inside the building, which has an entrance at both ends, there is a deep concrete pit reached by ladders of non-ferrous metal, and pipes disappearing out of the lower wall. It is also earthcovered, so it's wartime. Popular opinion has ranged from a disposal facility for battery acid for Anstruther Chain Home station to a fuel depot for the FIDO system ( a system for lighting fires along the length of a runway to disperse fog) for Crail airfield.
I'll rake the piictures out later.
Posted by: The Fox, August 2, 2008, 4:52pm; Reply: 2
Non ferrous metal might imply that it was somewhere that had to be spark free such a pumping station on a fuel pipeline. Just a thought.
Posted by: Apollo, August 2, 2008, 5:59pm; Reply: 3
My apologies to the nice people at geograph that let us have these pics in return for a link, and Elliott Simpson who only added it in March, I forgot the link which also shows you where the place is:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/745774No real mystery about Crail surely, a vast an wandering airfield site. As The Fox says, non-ferrous fittings and pipes wandering through a concrete pit had to be fuel, the battery story is surely Scotch Mist. The specific purpose may be lost, never to be seen again, but...
Found another mystery while checking the Anstruther CHL info (nice site remains in the pics) ;)
http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.newcandig_details_gis?inumlink=247559
Posted by: the_historian, August 2, 2008, 7:45pm; Reply: 4
I knew the site was a fuel depot of some kind; just pointing out the various theories on it's origins, since it lies 1 1/2 k west of the actual airfield perimeter. The building is identical to that one at Comrie though.
Could that mystery site be the original location for Anstruther CHL? It was built near the coast in 1939 (NO600059), then moved to Kingsmuir due to technical problems. That's pretty close to the NMR in that link.
Posted by: Apollo, August 2, 2008, 10:12pm; Reply: 5
FIDO, one of those nice, well-behaved acronyms that can start an argument - Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation, or Fog Intense Dispersal Operation, or Fog Intense Dispersal Of. I like the first one.
Like PLUTO, one I never looked at in detail until I started looking at things properly in here, and what an eye opener. The reference to lighting fires along the runway is a gem of understatement, and I read that FIDO was a massive consumer of fuel (so those pipes and pit could well be the_historian being spot on) and 100,000 gallons per hour appears to have been typical consumption, twice that on a really long heavy bomber runway. Considered worth it though, in the saving of air crew and aircraft that would almost certainly have crashed or been lost in thick fog. They may have had landing aids, but nothing like we have now, and they could get the crew near to the field, but not much else.
If there were a few more of those found at Crail, then I think the purpose is clear.
The Coves site could well be an abandoned development. I deliberately didn't look too close before posting the first mention, and pre-judging, but I've pulled up the aerial views now and the place has been completely ploughed out, so no ground clues at all, and the only confirmation of its existence is the slightly odd route the coastal fence takes. Presumably this follows the original compound.
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