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

has any one got any info on what was in the field at the top of levers causeway, was it a radar centre or something? used to play in that when i was younger cos me grandma and grandad lived on mount road oposite. I know its gone now but always wondered what it was

It was a radio comunications station. The home guard where on duty there for the duration of the war

Yes, it was a radar station. There's a thread I started about it somewhere, with aerial photos. I used to play there after the war too, mikeyfreedom.
It would be good if you, jimbob & mikeyfreedom could let us know a bit about yourselves in General Chit Chat/New members. I've got a feeling you may have much to contribute. There are many threads still searching for information.

Cheers, Chris.

Been round there fer few times!! offten wondered were everything was,those pics are great.Such a big gun site....

Just to add a few pictures I've got of the Storeton Ack Ack site. The one from 1940 shows a very advanced stage, about a year after the start of the war. 1979 & the site is still clear but the buildings are gone & the woodland grown. By 1987 there's virtually no more evidence than there is today.

The 1940 picture shows only 2 AA gun sites, the 1955 photo shows 4 gun sites, so there must have been some expansion, 1955 also shows a lot more buildings expanding outwards.

http://www.pastscape.org/hob.aspx?h...source=text&nmr=&defra=&p=0#

According to this, it only had 2 guns, but I agree, there seem to be sites for more.

Brilliant Chris, that 1940 picture makes alot more sense of what I found - I think all of the base slabs of the bigger buildings are still there.

To keep everybody else up to date, I video'd round this site, unfortunately if the video is reduced down to youtube size it is cr@p so I won't be posting it - in full quality the half hour vid doesn't even fit on a DVD.

I will get round to posting some stills from the video together with descriptions of approximately where they are. I have been meaning to go out with my GPS to tie down exact positions, but the weather has gone t*ts up every time I have planned to go out and I wanted to do some still photos.

nice work mate!!

Excellent pics chris.

fantastic chris. thanks for Sharing.

I've had a look at the NMR photo of Storeton AA - if you look closely, in the field on the other side of the road, is the ramp for the GL radar, which was required to get it above the 85 yard diameter octagonal wire mesh mat. It's obviously disappeared since. the other arrows are what I guess are the control bunker and sewerage works. I've tagged some photos on of Blyth Gloucester Farm AA site showing an intact GL ramp. The landowner there had no idea what all the concrete bits were.

The GL mat was a 85 yard diameter octagonal wire mesh, usually at about head height (yes - chicken wire) which was found to improve the early gun laying radars, by providing them with an artificial horizon. Later models did not need them. Note that the Storeton AA site photo does not show it, so it was added later, and removed by the later photos:



Blyth AA aerial - note the octagonal trackway around what was the GL mat shape - and the stores underneath it (unusual):



The GL ramp itself - as built:

Thanks for that; we're learning more all the time.

Thanks for that W10694 - that ramp had completely disapeared by 1955.

The additional guns may have been the GL controlled guns put in retrospectively after the original manual HA guns shown in the 1940 picture.

Anybody got any info on the AA gun that use to be towed round the streets of Birkenhead, stopping on pieces of waste land to take a pot shot when an air raid was on, then trundle off to a different spot and do the same again. It use to come to a piece of land next door but one to our house in Peel Street Tranmere and fire a shot then move away. My dad said it always sounded as if our house had been hit when it fired a round. We where all in the cellar of our house when this use to happen.