Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Wirral gun sites from the second world war

In the light of new evidence, DD, I've had a closer look at my photo, and I think you'll find there were actually four gun emplacements, three on the roadway and a fourth in the grass at the top of the dip containing the bowling greens and tennis courts. I found the drawing below at the Archives the other week - it was apparently drawn in the mid-50s when work was being done on reinstating the Prom.

If you look on "Google Maps" you can see marks in the ground that might be the remains of the sites that were in place on what is now parkland. It would have been in the 50's when as a child I played there.

There's another thread going "whats that structure" who are asking about the engineering brick wall behind the gun site, as martyfred99 happliy has found some info on the location of guns does he have any info of the wall behind the guns at the noses.

The structure behind the four guns is probably a Radar/ Searchlight.

Re the drawing, was there a date or any other information it please? Might it have been a "proposed" drawing?

Unfortunately, there's nothing written on the drawing at all, but it seems to be associated with another, more detailed, plan listed in the catalogue dated 1954, concerning the demolition and reinstatement of the gun site. Sadly, that plan seems to have gone AWOL, but the staff have promised to have a good hunt round for it, so hopefully it'll turn up someday...

marty99fred,

Thanks for that info & good luck.

marty99fred
Can I ask where did you get the air picture of the dips from, I've been having a closer look and as well as the army camp huts,there appears lots more on the lhs between the two round abouts and what appears to be barbed wire line, so I'am just wondering if theres a higher resolution air photo around.

My Mum told me there was a gun battery on the Shore Fields in New Ferry- dont know when that was moved though

The house next to the Portland Court flats in New Brighton has a circular brick structure at the rear, that looks like a disused gun emplacement!

If you were looking on Google Earth, I think it is just part of the garden as it wasn't there in 2000.

Sorry for the delay in answering, but I've been trying to get hold of the original reference for the photo. It's actually from a sequence of aerial photos taken in 1946 by Aerofilms Ltd and the ref. no. is A1794/46. The Aerofilms Archive is now in the hands of English Heritage, and copies of the photos can be obtained through their website. The bit I posted is an enlargement of a very small section of a shot covering most of New Brighton seafront, so I don't think they'd actually be able to supply a copy with much better resolution, even using the original negative. There were probably other shots in the sequence showing the Dips in much greater detail, but unfortunately they're not amongst the copies I have, so I can't give you any reference numbers for them.

Don't know if I've posted this before but a friend of mine lived in New Brighton in the 1950s and as a lad he said in that area was a round built hole with spiral stairs going down round the inside walls with rooms going off it - he thought it may have been used for storing shells for the guns maybe.Said he'd been down them.

This is the bloke with the cave under his house (the worm holes)

Here's some i took today of the jetty and platform