NHER 43623 (Monument record) - Site of World War Two air raid shelters behind the Albany Road, Lichfield Road, Gordon Road and Southtown Road frontages, Southtown

May 2006. Norfolk NMP.
Seven probable air raid shelters dating to World War Two are visible as earthworks and structures on aerial photographs (S1), centred around TG 5215 0676. They lay in gardens behind houses fronting onto Albany Road, Lichfield Road, Gordon Road and Southtown Road, Southtown. This location, together with their small size, suggests that they were private shelters, intended for the use of particular households. They may have been Anderson shelters, or similar proprietary designs. Most are visible as earthwork mounds, which probably covered small semi-sunken or surface-level structures. Some of the mounds incorporated structural elements such as blast walls (see the shelters at TG 5217 0673). One shelter (at TG 5218 0676) is visible as a bare or only lightly covered rectangular structure with a curved shape in profile; this may have been an Anderson shelter without its usual covering of earth. None of the mapped shelters are visible on recent aerial photographs of the area, e.g. (S2), and they have presumably been levelled.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 9 May 2006.