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Old gun battery site’s around Birmingham & nearby

Thanks man_from_xanadu
I've just caught up with your post. What wonderful detailed post it is too. Thanks for the memories, I had some great fun on that site.
Frothy
 
When I was a nipper, I remember there being a series of depressions in the ground on the hill above Alwold road by Weoley Castle. You can still see the larger depressions today (see Google Streetview link below). Back then (1960s) they were all filled with sand, like golf bunkers. We kids used to play in them as they made excellent "sand pit" play areas. My dad told me that there had been anti-aircraft guns there in the war, each gun surrounded by sandbags. He said that when the gun site had been dismantled they had simply emptied the sandbags into the pits. Now my Dad didn't live in that area during the war, so he must have been told that by a local. Can anyone confirm that? I see there is a heavy AA gun site listed nearby at Welsh House Farm, but those big guns would have been too big to fit into the bunkers I remember, and Heavy AA guns usually had concrete emplacements anyway. Maybe a Bofors gun battery? Maybe even for only a short period or for an exercise. Or maybe a fire-watcher posts? - You get a great view over Birmingham from there. Anyone got any memories? I see there are some photos of the depressions on Flickr, simply labelled as old mine workings. It doesn't explain why I remember them filled up with sand, unless some enterprising person had improvised their own golf course complete with bunkers. :)

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Further to my last post - Here's an aerial photo from 1945 - There are some mysterious bright splodges in the right area. - The area to the west seems to have been divided up in some way - maybe into some kind of allotments for the "dig for Victory" campaign?

AlwoldRd.jpg
 
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