World War Ii Bofors Gun Tower And Ancillary Building

Heritage listing

Details MATERIALS: reinforced concrete frame and platforms with brick infill. DESCRIPTION: the tower, located at the north-east corner of the football ground, comprises two elevated platforms, approximately 5m high, located immediately adjacent to each other, leaving a narrow gap between them at platform level. The Bofors gun would have been mounted on the larger (north-western) platform and its range predictor (to calculate enemy aircraft speed and height and thus ensure the accuracy of the gun) on the smaller (south-eastern) one. This was so that the gun’s recoil did not disrupt the predictor. The raised hexagonal concrete mount for the Bofors gun is located in the centre of the gun platform. It is not known whether the steel holdfast frame survives. The concrete frame of the platforms has full-height brick infill which has been extended to the rear (north-east) of the range predictor platform to form a concrete-roofed extension. This had a large opening in the south-eastern elevation, now blocked. Small openings with concrete frames are set high in the brickwork to provide ventilation. There is another large blocked opening in the north-east wall of the infill of the gun platform. Internally, the range predictor platform has two floors and the gun platform just one. An external concrete staircase along the south-east elevation provides access from the ground floor to the first floor ammunition store in the range predictor tower (the entrance door in the south-west elevation is bricked up) and then up to the roof. At ground level, the range predictor tower has a pillbox-type room with a low ceiling. The gun platform has a single high-ceilinged room on the ground floor. This room and that in the outshut at the rear of the range predictor platform would have housed the

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.