NHER 43588 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two industrial air raid shelters off Queen Anne's Road, Southtown

May 2006. Norfolk NMP.
Three World War Two air raid shelters are visible as earthworks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S2), centred at TG 5209 0601. Individually, they are both larger than a typical family-sized shelter (compare NHER 43622 385m to the northeast) and smaller than most public shelters (compare NHER 43300 510m to the south). They also appear to have been located on an industrial site: a factory or similar industrial building is visible immediately to the southeast and the area is marked as a timber yard on an historic Ordnance Survey map (S3). This suggests that these were industrial shelters provided for workers at the site, and their size and form is comparable to other industrial shelters identified elsewhere at Great Yarmouth.

Each shelter consisted of an elongated earthwork mound, which presumably covered a surface-level or semi-sunken structure. The underlying structures may have had a curved or parabolic shape in profile. An entrance is visible as a slight indentation in the outline of the southeast corner of each mound. Each shelter appears to have had a ventilation shaft in its roof, located towards the northwest end of the mound. More recent aerial photographs of the area, e.g. (S4), and modern Ordnance Survey maps demonstrate that the shelters have since been levelled and the site resurfaced and built over.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 8 May 2006.