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Match du groupe B M18 masculin des championnats du monde juniors 2019
Photo par David Sandoz
3U9A4229
27/05/2026. Washington DC, United States. 2026 Defence Reception hosted by the British Ambassador Christian Turner and BDSUS. Picture by Rebecca Lessner.
Anti-Invasion Defences, the Pillbox is sited on the remains of Scrabster Castle.
Thurso, Caithness, Scotland.
27/05/2026. Washington DC, United States. 2026 Defence Reception hosted by the British Ambassador Christian Turner and BDSUS. Picture by Rebecca Lessner.
04/06/2026. London, United Kingdom. Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets Uwe Horstmann, CEO and Mike Armstrong, UK MD with Will Stone as he visits Stark Defence in Swindon. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street
27/05/2026. Washington DC, United States. 2026 Defence Reception hosted by the British Ambassador Christian Turner and BDSUS. Picture by Rebecca Lessner.
There was a World War Two Strongpoint around 'Duck Corner' I haven't been able to find any real information about the area, only that there were temporary features. This little building mostly matches the characteristics of a 'Ruck' Pillbox in size and shape, the end section is bricked in with a window and a small vent above, not sure if there is an entrance the other end. There is one half of an arch missing in the centre, possibly used for Defence with a Light Machine Gun or Rifles, with added sandbag protection. Between each end arch and the next there is a small gap, again not sure why, it's also possible it may have been used by the Home Guard as a Shelter or Storehouse, whatever its purpose was it was here to Defend the junction approach for Hollesley.
The Ruck Machine Gun Post or Ruck Pillbox is a type of Hardened Field Fortification designed by James Ruck and was made from prefabricated concrete sections and paving slabs, sandbags and rammed earth. The Ruck Machine Gun Post was relatively widely used in Lincolnshire and along the east coast of England, but is now extremely rare with just a handful of extant examples. There are only five Ruck Machine Gun Post sites that are recorded in the Defence of Britain database. James Ruck was the north midlands regional works adviser to the Ministry of Home Security, his principal duties related to the provision of Air Raid shelters. In June 1940 he offered the military a design for a Machine Gun Post. ''I propose they be constructed of hollow concrete blocks filled with the earth excavated from the site, roofed with precast concrete beams and paving stone flags, walls 18in thick, spaces being left in each side so that fire can be operated in any direction, a portion of the roof could also be adjustable for firing overhead''.
Ruck's design was based on precast half-arch concrete sections produced by Hydroprest Concrete Ltd at Scunthorpe. Four 12in sections formed an arch with inside dimensions 5ft wide, 7ft high and 2ft long. Any number of the arches could be assembled together to form a structure of a desired length, but for Ruck's design 20in gaps between the arches would be left to serve as Embrasures, with an inside length of 12ft. The arches were clad with two layers of mortar and concrete paving slabs, this filled in the gaps except where an Embrasure was required and gave a wall thickness that varied between 6 and 9in. The ends were walled up with hollow concrete blocks filled with bricks, the wall at one end had an Embrasure, the other end had an entrance. The concrete offered only limited protection, so the structure would be partly buried and then surrounded by an outer wall of sandbags to the level of the Embrasures and the gap between the wall and the concrete filled with rammed earth.
According to Ruck, who enthusiastically promoted his design, the principal advantages of the Machine Gun Post were that it could be quickly constructed by unskilled labour and made economical use of materials, the precast components could be produced at the rate of 70 posts per day and Ruck claimed that six unskilled men could complete three precast units in a day. Ruck also emphasised that his design made use of ''some hundreds of thousands of tons of this material lying in stocks in makers yards throughout the country requiring no fresh drain on cement or steel'' Ruck estimated the cost of a Machine Gun Post to be just £40, the equivalent to £2,200 in 2021.
In July 1940, instructions were issued for the order of 1,600 posts, by September 1940 some 4,000 posts had been constructed and there were orders for a further 2,000. Today, the Ruck Machine Gun Post presents something of a mystery, despite the substantial numbers constructed, traces of them are very rare, with only just five being recorded by the Defence of Britain project. Of all the Pillbox designs, the Ruck Machine Gun Post is one of the most readily disassembled and this may have been the fate of many of these Machine Gun Post, because the they were partially buried, and were best employed on rising ground, it may be that many were deployed in soft cliffs and dunes along an ever-changing coastline and have been lost to erosio, there may yet be extant examples that are simply undiscovered !