NHER 27631 (Monument record) - World War Two military site at Runham, Great Yarmouth

February 2006. Norfolk NMP.
A World War Two military site is visible as structures, buildings and earthworks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S4), centred at TG 5175 0887. The precise function of the site is unknown, but it may have been used by the Home Guard and some of its defences may have been constructed for practice purposes rather than for purely strategic reasons. It consisted of a compound defined by what was probably barbed wire, which enclosed both the structures and defences mapped by the NMP and the track giving access to the site (not mapped). Within the compound were several huts or similar structures. Some of these may have been the same structures as buildings depicted on the Ordnance Survey 2nd edition 25 inch map (S5), and therefore may have been of non-military origin (although they could have been used by military personnel during the war). A concrete structure at TG 5176 0886 was an hexagonal pillbox; this could have been a World War Two Type 22 pillbox, or a World War One pillbox similar to those known elsewhere from Great Yarmouth (see NHER 18493 and 18494 located approximately 1.15km to the west). Three spigot mortar emplacements are visible, two sited along the side of the track (at TG 5174 0888 and TG 5178 0885) and one at the corner of a hut (at TG 5178 0884). No traces of the site have been identified on recent aerial photographs of the area, for example (S6).
S. Tremlett (NMP), 9 February 2006.