Sentinel (4 of 4)
The sea wall along the river Crouch and around the Dengie peninsula, Essex, features a large number of war time pill boxes. This has always struck me as a little odd, as the place feels remote, empty apart from a few farms. This structure is a mine field control tower, built against the threat of invasion in 1940, the British authorities fearing that invasion troops would land via the 'back door' - the river Crouch being navigable some way inland at the time to fairly large vessels. Landings here would have placed invasion troops behind the main Thames Estuary defences and only around 30 miles from central London. The estuary was mined and covered by a system of crude rocket launchers to protect against this threat, controlled from this tower and I suspect a large number of the pill boxes nearby were to protect this structure.
Sentinel (4 of 4)
The sea wall along the river Crouch and around the Dengie peninsula, Essex, features a large number of war time pill boxes. This has always struck me as a little odd, as the place feels remote, empty apart from a few farms. This structure is a mine field control tower, built against the threat of invasion in 1940, the British authorities fearing that invasion troops would land via the 'back door' - the river Crouch being navigable some way inland at the time to fairly large vessels. Landings here would have placed invasion troops behind the main Thames Estuary defences and only around 30 miles from central London. The estuary was mined and covered by a system of crude rocket launchers to protect against this threat, controlled from this tower and I suspect a large number of the pill boxes nearby were to protect this structure.