Is Sefton Council the worst Council in Britain for preserving World War II heritage?

Sefton Council, has done great work creating a walking and cycling accessible coastal path all the way from Hall Road on the edge of Liverpool via Hightown to Formby. In doing so it has either deliberately or through ignorance neglected or deliberately filled in important remains of the World War Two coastal defences that protected Liverpool Bay and the West Lancashire coast. If deliberate then this is a stupefying decision to almost literally cover over local history; if due to ignorance then it shows a stunning lack of local knowledge.

 

I grew up in Hightown a large commuter village on the coast a couple of miles outside of the continuous Liverpool conurbation. In the late 1970s, we played as children among the sand dunes where a new estate was being built, sand dunes that were still lined with concrete and barbed wire fences from World War II defences. Where we could freely wander into the Second World War bunkers, probably gun emplacements, maybe just air raid shelters between the dunes, West Lancs Golf Course, and the coast near the outflow pipe at the end of the small River Alt.

 

There are three emplacements still there, and inland what look like air raid shelters – pillboxes – in a couple of farmers’ fields, and another concrete defensive point at a small bridge over a brook a couple of miles north and inland at Little Altcar. Is this heritage preserved, explained, access provided, or simply maintained? It is ignored, completely as far as I can tell, and in the case of the dark, damp and dingy coastal bunkers we used to duck in and out of, they’ve been deliberately blocked up so that it is hard to tell what they were.

 

The photographs here are from 2009 (the dates have got jumbled up in transfer at some point) and a couple showing the site of two of the bunkers from December 2017. In the earlier photos Frances & Jules are standing on the rooves of the bunkers so you can see where they are and how hard they are to spot just from a few yards away. My, crouched by the entrance, shows the scale. The later photos show they are even harder to spot now, and I saw the entrances seem to have been filled in more.

 

These ‘bunkers’ are probably the coastal defence battery as described on Wikipedia (the first sentence quoting the entry on heritage gateway: “Listed as in poor condition (surveyed in 2000) is Coastal Battery S0011771 (Crosby Point Battery), between Coastguard Station and Hightown, north of Crosby. This is near the end of the West Lancs Golf Course, a mile south from Hightown station just off the footpath from Hall Road to Hightown. When Sefton Council upgraded the Sefton Coastal Footpath they blocked up two [actually three] gun emplacements that remained of the Fort Crosby site.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hightown,_Merseyside

 

Ironically these bunkers used to be hidden slightly back in the dunes so one had to look to find them. Now they are exposed near the path but are less visible.

 

By contrast in Jersey (where they obviously have more unique for Britain war heritage), in Ireland, or in other countries I see more evidence that some sites and remnants are actually preserved and the memory kept.

 

The World War II remains are listed in the various databases, it seems heritage is preserved quite well digitally, but not in reality. Three World War Two invasion defence pillboxes can be seen near Gorsey Lane and are listed in the database, each as: Type 23 World War II concrete pillbox, constructed in the period 1940 to 1941. These are found in the Defence of Britain Archive of the Council for British Archaeology, 2002.

 

Each feature is listed on the Heritage Gateway / Pastscape database

 

Crosby Point Coastal Battery and its history is recorded here:

 

http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=1425941

 

Clicking on related monuments give you the descriptions of others nearby, though which describe each one I am writing about I am not sure because I don’t know the precise locations.

 

One pillbox is here: http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=1425940

 

It is a shame that the links to these various really useful and interesting sites are not more obvious on the front page or links of ‘Historic England’, the body formerly known as English Heritage. This page does enable you to search listed and many other heritage sites: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/non-listed-sites/

 

But only of course in England, in our artificially divided island where official heritage maps, like traffic and transport information has to stop at arbitrary lines on a map between Wales, England and Scotland.

 

A Channel 4 programme, ‘Britain at Low Tide’ featured this section of coast in episode two in November 2016. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britain-at-low-tide Channel 4 promoted the CITiZAN database and coastal archaeology survey app. https://citizan.org.uk/app/ Created by different partners, it uses a variety of sources including much information from Historic England’s databases. The map is easy to use and you can pull up the results around Hightown including the remnants I am talking about. Unfortunately, the Bing map base is not as useful for the coastal areas as looking at the Ordnance Survey maps that underlay the feature on the Historic England site. And the regular Ordnance Survey map does not show these features.

 

Note. http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/

A search on a typical Hightown postcode set at 2km (to not only cover the built up settlement) brings up many results – quite a few in the historic villages of Ince Blundell and Little Crosby, but most of the entries listed are the sites of ships wrecked off the coast near Formby – there are 50 !! listed over the last 250 years.

 

 

I wrote about the same topic on this website, last year, here: https://kironreid.co.uk/2017/07/21/failure-to-preserve-world-war-2-heritage-in-nw-england/

‘Failure to preserve World War 2 heritage in NW England.’ 21 July 2017.

I’ve raised the issue several times since 2008, in 2010, 2011.

 

On a nearby preserving the past topic I’ve also tried to get local and heritage authorities interested about a small aspect of railways heritage. I’ll write about that next.

 

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2 Replies to “Is Sefton Council the worst Council in Britain for preserving World War II heritage?

  1. My original draft 2007 enquiry to local authority on this topic read as follow:

    (i) the last remaining WW2 military heritage at the coastal path between Blundellsands Sailing Club and West Lancs Golf Course. As a child in the 1970s before the expansion of Hightown and the clean up of the dunes the whole coast between Hightown (then end of Elvington) and West Lancs Golf Course was covered with remnants of WW2 defence structures. We played among the concrete posts and barbed wire and at the military bunkers dug into the dunes near the outflow pipe at the end of the River Alt. These underground pill boxes or bunkers have just been filled in next to the new coastal path running alongside them without any acknowledgment of their importance as the path goes right by them. They used to be hidden slightly back in the dunes so one had to look to find them. They should be recognised. Presumably builders were concerned that they were a danger, though generations of children will have played in them without any danger. They are historically important. The new path is excellent but this military history shouldn’t be lost without thought. As far as I am aware the only remaining military emplacements near by are the bunker in the fields by Gorsey Lane inland from the railway (if it is still there) and the air raid shelter or gun emplacement next to the River Alt just inland of the first roundabout / Formby junction on the A565 coming from Ince Blundell.

  2. Forgotten Fort Crosby: Dune Heritage Revealed.
    Thanks to Dr. Johnny Clarkson (Maghull GP and serious WW2 military history enthusiast) for bringing to my attention this excellent booklet on Fort Crosby by Alison Burns of the University of Manchester. Informative, well written and well designed. The booklet can be downloaded for free from the link below.
    Forgotten Fort Crosby: Dune Heritage Revealed. October 2015. Author Alison Burns of Manchester University. Published by Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership. The abstract says: Abstract
    Hidden within the dunes which lie between Hightown and Crosby lie the remnants of Fort Crosby. During the first and second World Wars it formed part of the defence system at the entrance to the River Mersey and the important City of Liverpool. After WWII Fort Crosby became a POW camp, housing up to 1000 prisoners at any one time. In the 1950’s it was closed and gradually became derelict, standing as a reminder of the past until its demolition. This booklet outlines the biography of the Fort and includes memories of people still resident in Crosby who knew the Fort and its population.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283300960_Forgotten_Fort_Crosby_Dune_Heritage_Revealed

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