NHER 43308 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two barrage balloon at corner of Anson Road and Southtown Road, Southtown

March 2006. Norfolk NMP.
The site of a World War Two barrage balloon is visible on aerial photographs taken from March 1944 onwards (S1)-(S3), centred at TG 5215 0696. It occupied what was probably a bomb site: the Ordnance Survey 2nd edition 25 inch map depicts houses at this location (S4). The ground-level structures, as visible in 1945 (S3), consisted of a central tethering block within a square ‘frame’, surrounded by what were probably two concentric circles of further tethering blocks. The two outer circles are mostly visible as pits or scars where the blocks have been removed. An ancillary structure, probably a hut, at TG 5214 0695, may have been an operational building and/or perhaps provided shelter for the crew. There may have been further structures associated with the site but these are indistinguishable from the civilian buildings that surround it. The site was dismantled at the end of the war and has since been built over. No traces of it have been recognised on recent aerial photographs of the area.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 8 March 2006.