Am on the hunt for Pill boxes on the Wirral and only know of the ones here-

Bromborough Pool Bridge,
Brimstage Road,
Parkgate,
Leasowe Shore,

...and some others which i have passed but cant remember where i'd seen them.

Could do a search on tinterweb but that ways boring so thought i would ask you guys instead.

Does anyone know of anymore??

Would like to go and visit them and take pics and stuff.

Maybe there is already a post about? i did a search to no avail

maybe this site will help
clicky

i may be able to help you

In Ellesmere port Huton

pics

There's some buried under Thurstaston Common along with a couple of other buildings aren't there?

yep

I see this topic is running on other sites at the moment ....

There is a brilliant Defence of Britain (DOB) file for Google Earth in which you can select Pillboxes etc.

http://www.pillbox.org.uk/methodology/google_earth.asp

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that looks like a tree lol?

Sorry mat pic didnt come out right so deleted and started again.

Original pst read -

Thanks for eveyones help.

Anyone know what the post is infront of the this pill box in brimstage?

A better link would have been straight (well nearly straight) to the DOB google KMZ dataset ... (it was hidden at the bottom of the page of the previous link).

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/specColl/dob/download.cfm

Moreton shore, beind leasowe Castle, coastal defence pill box!!
Meols / Moreton, used to be a HUGE one, dont know if still there tho! (sorry, that was shelter i think!!)
Puddington, by old pig farm, pill boxes, bunkers and AA defences!

couple on the a41 by the village hotel. either end of the bridge

Thanks for the info there guys. Am goin to hunt for Wirrals Pill Boxes tomorrow and try and take a few pics.

found these

w

was this a pill box ?

there is one on the bromborough road down at spital dam. go along the bromborough road travelling past the brown cow and as you go down the hill to spital dam the pillbox is on the left before you get to the mini rounderbout

PICS

There used to be a line of old pill boxes alongside Bidston Village, near where Fender Way now is. When we were kids, for a day out we'd get the bus from Birkenhead and get off in Bidston Village. We'd turn left off the main road (I think there was a sweet shop nearby) and walk through a farmyard and along a tree-lined track on to open fields, with Bidston Hill on our left. Dotted along this track were two or three perfectly intact concrete pill boxes (we called them machine-gun posts, because that's what our Dads called them) which were sunk into the earth and had long been abandoned. The big attraction for us kids was that the open outer parts of the pill boxes, where the steps led down to the entrance, were flooded and full of massive frogs that hadn't been disturbed since the war - we used to catch these and take them home. Then we'd have races with them, but most ended up squashed under car wheels after hopping out into the road. The pill boxes were there certainly into the late 50s-early 60s, but the whole area is now built over by what I think became the Ford Estate. I've often wondered why they were sited in such an obscure backwater with no obvious military significance and wonder if they could have been guarding Bidston Observatory, which I believe was used for secret wartime research, including calculating the tides for the D-Day beaches. Does anyone else remember these pill boxes?

I think the track that you're describing was the "7 Styles" that the pub was named after - the start of it remains as the alley opposite St Oswold's church in the village today.

I don't remember them - too young! But you are correct that Bidston Observatory played a role in the war - the story that I've heard is that one of the "go / no go" decisions on D-Day was made based on the weather and tidal reports from Bidston.

I think that one of these boxes still remains marooned between the M53 and the railway - or I may of dreamt that!

Thanks for jogging my memory, AR One. You're dead right - there WAS a string of stiles along the path and there could well have been seven of them. I remember because they were quite a novelty to us townie kids, who didn't know that you were actually allowed to climb over them. Hopefully I can get down there some time and check out if any pill boxes remain. There might even be some frogs left.

Theres another pill box over the feild by the the play ground from this one aswell.......

There is a pillbox type structre on the coast line behind Leasowe Castle.

Yer went to PARKGATE today and FOUND THESE

YERR

Quality find

Superb Robbo.

yer

There is an underground air raid shelter opposite that pillbox.

Was i right matt, think you did say you found out, was it for Mortor or HMG

in parkgate? says robbo

Yep under the school field

Fancy telling Robbo that.

is there a way in boss ??????????????????????????

This one is in Bromborough, along the old rail line from Port Sunlight to Bromborough docks.

Not very accommodating inside are they. Im amazed that there are any left Unblocked, they are usually bricked up, Im guessing, to prevent people injuring themselves or something along those lines..

Nope, very small



I s'pose cost is the issue with locking them up? Easier to leave them until someone does injure themselves i.e. start a fire and get stuck inside?

Looks like a lot of fires have been started in that one

The air raid shelter in Mostyn House School Parkgate is now a rifle range, was used for many years to store sports equipment etc (and was nicknamed "the dive").

Yep iv got pictures inside. Nothing interesting in there. And it not in the school its under the playground

yer put them up man

I have seen a pill box at the Hooton end of the Wirral Way in modern times, and i seem to recall when i was a kid playing in one somewhere off the Wirral Way up a farm track between Willaston and Neston, but that was well over 30 years ago !!!.

i have been in that pillbox on the port sunlight 2 brombourgh line when i went from port sunlight all the to the end of the line

The lines of trees around Brimstage were used to hide vehicles shipped over in the convoys and used in D-Day.

There is a nice pillbox in a garden by Caldy Crossroads, going down to the Dee (sorry no pics), looks like it's used as a shed.

Caldy Pillbox

A while ago, came across this Anderson Shelter, still in existence, top of Marshlands Road, Little Neston:



Does anyone know of any others ?

Also - does anyone know what this is. I know where the Heswall Bombing Decoy was, but not it's control bunker. However, nearby, in the Dee Estuary side of the Wirral Way embankment is this:



It's a concrete slab, quite thick, looks very MoD type of concrete, it's never had anything built / put on top of it, and it looks undercut. I think it may be it, it's about the right size, but I've never followed it up. Does anyone know better. It's more Thurstaston, rather than Heswall, and is the green spot about here (the red is the decoys site):

When i was a kid,- for a short while i lived next door to a school friend who said he and another of his friends used to play in an air raid shelter almost in the centre of Neston, we moved in about 1976, i have no idea where this shelter was or if it was even a "real" shelter or something that kids of the time thought was a shelter !.

There where 2 large air raid shelters? in the field behind Barnstone post office. 3/4 of them where in the ground with earth/grass up the side of what was above the ground and you went in through a round hatch on the top. the bit sticking up was shaped like a nissen hut It was about 1949/1950 when i was there with a gang of mates and the farmer came and chased us.

If we're talking about airraid shelters we used to have one in the bottom of the garden - brick structure with a huge concrete slab for a roof (about 18" thick). I went away to university and came home and my mother had got someone in to demolish our own piece of history - Grrrr

just found this

This is a WWII Type FW3/26 Pillbox, located next to the M53. It is a square pillbox with a 6in. concrete roof supported on corner brick pillars, with internal anti ricochet walls and simple entranceway [steps down into pillbox]. Faces north-east, traces of dark green camouflage paint on pillars, built 1940/41.
Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/667409

wow good find, wonder how deep it is?

awesome thread iam sure they is another one on rivacre road away from the road i remember going down there as a kid playing in it.

Was very grown over and had a wasp nest near it had steps going under the ground aswell.

may try and find it again when i can get down there

good stuff can you pm me were this is please

interesting

pic

This is a type 24 pill box & the post is a spigot mortar base.

There are the remains of one on the footpath running along the Fender by the Woodchurch Estate (and I believe it was the scene of and unsolved murder in 1955)

There is one on Caldy road just off Caldy roundabout at the bottom of somebody's garden next to the road. I drive past it all the time. I will get a picture sometime. Can't see it on Google earth or bing maps.

you probably wont be able to see all sorts on bing maps due to half of the wirral pictures outdated by nearly ten years. anything past birkenhead park on bing is as it was over a decade ago

All the birds-eye-views are relatively recent on Bing, on Google earth it has a historic function so you can see previous satellite images.

I am sure the pill box has been there long before any of those photos on bing or Google where taken. In fact long before the invention of colour photography.

Seriously though I think its obscured by trees when you look from above.

It is a mortar spigot.

This is what would have been mounted on the spigot mortar base; A Blacker Bombard: