NHER 52100 (Monument record) - Five probable World War Two air raid shelters

May 2009. Norfolk NMP.
Five probable air raid shelters dating to World War Two are visible as earthworks on aerial photographs (S1) in gardens off Harvey Lane and Gordon Avenue, Thorpe St Andrew. This location, together with their small size, suggests that they were private shelters, intended for the use of these particular households. Two of the shelters (at TG 2524 0938 and TG 2530 0926) are visible as earthwork mounds, which probably covered small semi-sunken or surface-level structures. They may have been Anderson shelters, or a similar proprietary design. Two further possible shelters (at TG 2548 0922 and TG 2555 0923) were visible as entrances to what appears to be below ground space.
One shelter (at TG 2527 0936) 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. Further shelters may have lain in other, nearby gardens, but nothing was convincing or clear enough on the consulted aerial photographs to warrant mapping. None of the mapped shelters is visible on recent aerial photographs of the area, e.g. (S2), and they have presumably been levelled.
E. Bales (NMP), 7 May 2009.