On Saturday the 27th of October 2018 I set off from home to drive to Bawdsey in Suffolk, a 82 mile drive. I arrived after an hour and 3 quarters and parked up in Ferry Road in Bawdsey quay.
This was my first trip to stay out in my van, although its not finished I put a blow up bed in the rear and parked up in the spot I was to stay overnight.
GPX File here
It was a lovely scenic spot too by the River Deben opposite a picnic site that had toilets too, a bonus!
After a quick cup of tea, I pulled on my boots and headed off on my planned walk.
I walked along Ferry Road for quite a way heading towards Bawdsey itself, this walk unfortunately had quite a bit of road walking due to lack of paths going in the directions I'd liked.
I pass the gates to Bawdsey manor estate.Built in 1886, it was enlarged in 1895 as the principal residence of Sir William Cuthbert Quilter. Requisitioned by the Devonshire Regiment during World War I and having been returned to the Quilter family after the war, it was purchased by the Air Ministry for £24,000 in 1936 to establish a new research station for developing the Chain Home RDF (radar) system. RAF Bawdsey was a base through the Cold War until the 1990s. The manor is now used for PGL holidays and courses, and has a small museum in the Radar Transmitter Block.
Maude Marion Quilter (born about 1868) of Bawdsey Manor, daughter of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, married Frederick Denny in 1888 and later had Horwood House as her country residence. It was at Bawdsey Manor that she knew of Harry Thrower, the father of Percy Thrower, as he was a gardener there, it being his first gardening position. When Maude wanted a head gardener at Horwood House, she recruited Harry and he remained there the rest of his life.
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| No Plants were seen crossing! |
I walk into Bawdsey. Bawdsey was originally an estate village and the majority of the old cottages were built by the Quilter family of Bawdsey Manor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as model cottages for their workers.
I approach Bawdsey Country Farm House, a lovely example of a Georgian House.
I reach School Lane which I turn right into and more road walking as I pass some farms as I walk onto East Lane.
I now reach the sea wall and see my first of 4 Martello Towers here at Bawdsey.
The coastline around East Lane has, over the centuries, experienced several episodes when defence works became necessary due to the risk of invasion. Recommendations for the defence of Bawdsey were made as early as the sixteenth century and in the early part of the nineteenth fears of invasion by Napoleon led to the building of seven Martello Towers. During the First World War several concrete pillboxes were built and one circular example still in good condition can be seen today.
In May 1940 it became clear that a full-scale invasion of the United Kingdom was a distinct possibility and this led to the fortification of the coastline on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The Royal Navy provided some 150 six-inch guns, most of which had been taken off warships broken up after the First World War and subsequently held in store for the purposes of providing more substantial defences. This ‘Emergency Coastal Defence Battery’ programme saw these guns placed in pairs at vulnerable points in order to defend against enemy shipping. The primary role of these batteries was to engage hostile vessels and to destroy the contents of beached craft.
During a reconnaissance in July 1940 it was decided that there was no possibility to site a battery in the Bawdsey area due to the low lying coastline and the certainty than any battery would be liable to flooding.
Batteries were built at Aldeburgh to the north and Felixstowe to the south but the intervening long stretch of unguarded coastline was clearly of concern to military planners and in February 1942, 332 Battery Royal Artillery who had manned Foulness Battery in Essex since 1940, transferred, together with their guns, to the newly constructed works here at East Lane.
The Emergency Coastal Defence Batteries confirmed to a similar overall layout but in detail could vary enormously. Bawsey followed the basic principle of having two separate gun emplacements with a partially buried central shelter and two magazines per gun. The whole structure was defensible with gun loops. On each side of the guns were two Coastal Artillery Searchlights in concrete emplacements with an effective range of 3200m. The square Battery Observation Post to be seen today consists of a partially underground basement with loopholes and a ground floor with two further floors above. The top floor has an armoured steel roof once supported by corner posts, which permitted all round vision. The corner posts have since failed allowing the roof to drop on to the main building.
Nissen huts were provided for office and domestic accommodation and the whole site was surrounded by barbed wire. Each battery was responsible for its own defence and gunners would have been allocated to defend the perimeter. The pillboxes which had been built in 1940, long before the construction of the battery, may have been used as part of their defensive plan. In total, the battery would have been manned by approximately eighty men.
Today heavy erosion by the sea has taken its toll although new beach defences are much in evidence. Over the last ten years the two searchlight emplacements and all the pillboxes with the exception of one from the First World War have been lost to the sea.
Although the overhead concrete structures for the gun houses have been removed, the gun houses and magazines are in good condition. The battery observation post (which is on private land and dangerous to enter) is one of the best preserved examples of its kind, although the metal frame with ‘Prisoners of War’ is an addition by a post-war artist.
This car park, is also an area where you can stay overnight in a camper,but not as pretty!
I now walk along the sea wall and the coastal path being battered by the wind.
I pass more Martello towers , most have been converted to Homes or holiday lets.
Originally 103 towers were built between 1805 and 1812 to resist a potential invasion by Napoleon.
29 were built between Aldeburgh and St Osyth Stone between 1808 and 1812 to protect Essex and Suffolk, the rest having been built a few years earlier across the Kent and Sussex coasts. They were built of brick, 13 foot thick on the seaward side, stood about 30 foot high and were equipped with a cannon on the roof. A supporting fort, or Redoubt, was built at Harwich.
- Martello V Bawdsey Pulled down and made into a sunken garden when Bawdsey Manor was built in late 1800s
- Martello W Bawdsey Converted into a house in 1985
- Martello X Bawdsey Washed into the sea in the early 20th century
- Martello Y Bawdsey Converted into a house in 2010
I now reach a place called Shingle Street, this place reminds me so much of Dungeness in Kent. It has that barren wilderness sort of feel to it.
Shingle Street is a small coastal hamlet in Suffolk, England, at the mouth of Orford Ness, situated between Orford and Bawdsey. Part of the coast is also known as Hollesley Bay; HM Young Offender Institution, Hollesley Bay Colony, is nearby.
Shingle Street was originally a home for fishermen and river pilots for the River Ore. Early in the 19th century a Martello tower was built, which was later a home for coastguards. Many of the original buildings date from this period, although several buildings were destroyed during World War II, including the Lifeboat Inn, the hamlet's only pub. A report from October 2004 suggests that Shingle Street is at risk from the sea and could disappear within 20 years if sea defences are not erected.
Shingle Street was the inspiration of the Thomas Dolby song "Cloudburst at Shingle Street", from the album The Golden Age of Wireless.
After World War II many strange happenings were reported to have taken place at Shingle Street, including a failed German invasion. Since the civilian population had been evacuated in May 1940, there were no eyewitness reports, although official documents remained classified until questions in the House of Commons led to their early release in 1993. These papers disclosed no German landing. In fact rumours of a failed invasion on the South and East Coasts were commonplace in September 1940 and helped to boost morale. Author James Hayward has proposed that these rumours, which were widely reported in the American press, were a successful example of black propaganda with an aim of ensuring American co-operation and securing lend lease resources by showing that the United Kingdom was capable of successfully resisting the German Army.
The Shingle Street Mystery
TWO women have spoken out to put the record straight over a mysterious war-time event on the Suffolk coastline.
Speculation and controversy surround what actually happened at Shingle Street, near Woodbridge, in August 1940.
Legend has it that British forces prevented a German invasion by “setting the sea alight” using pipelines in the sea filled with a flammable liquid.
But a mother and her daughter, from Sudbury, have now decided to make public some information they have known for many years.
Sue Brotherwood, clerk of Sudbury Town Council, confirmed the Shingle Street event did actually happen.
She said although it was “top secret”, her late uncle Ernest Ambrose, known as Sonny, had confided in his brother John, known as Dennis – her late father.
The 57-year-old, of Highview Close, Sudbury, said: “He said that the awful sounds, smells and noises of that day would haunt him to his grave.
“As there was no such thing as trauma counselling in those days, I am sure that is exactly what he did.”
Her mother Margaret – Dennis’s wife – recalled when her husband told her what Sonny had been involved in, he asked her not to repeat it.
The 80-year-old said: “He said they set light to the sea to stop the Germans getting through and that Sonny was there. Of course, I shoved it out of my mind.”
Mrs Brotherwood said she and her mother had mentioned it over the years, and thought other people knew what had happened.
She said: “We are not trying to stir anything up. We thought it was about time the record was put straight.”
She said it seemed “pretty pointless” keeping it secret now, adding how most of the people involved were dead.
Their news follows a story in the East Anglian Daily Times about mysterious pieces of what look like molten metal found on the beach at Bawdsey, raising questions they could be evidence of the failed invasion at Shingle Street.
Many of the boats near to the shore are said to have been caught in the blaze, resulting in German casualties.
In the aftermath of the attack, there were unconfirmed reports of many burned bodies littering the shoreline from Shingle Street to Harwich.
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| Looking across to Orford Ness |
I sit here on the beach at Shingle Street for lunch and listen to the soothing sound of the waves breaking in and nothing else, Silence sheer bliss!
Now I follow Barthorp's creek inland as I head towards Hollesley.
After a fair bit of farmland walking I can see Hollesley appear in the distance.
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| Rear of Run Cottage Touring Park. |
I walk through the graveyard of All Saints in Hollesley.
The church dates from pre 1087, so where our present building stands has been a site of Christian worship for 900 years. Nothing is left of the first building, and the present one is a 15th century church very greatly restored in the 19th century. Dickinsons "Suffolk" (published in 1957) records - "This church was largely rebuilt in 1886, when the north aisle was added.
Years ago, Hollesley was a small port. It stood on an inlet of the sea, which is now the small brook and drained marsh which we overlook on the south side of the church. There were a few outlying farms, but the village centred on a group of cottages on Fox Hill, the church, and Church Farm which still remains opposite our main door.
Development: In the 19th and 20th centuries, the village developed to the north. About a mile away is Her Majestys Young Offenders Institution known as Hollesley Bay Colony. In the 19th century this was a Colonial College where industrial youths were trained for agriculture in developing countries. In 1905 it became a Labour Colony (hence its name), where many London unemployed were retrained for farm work. It had been a Borstal until 1984 when it began to cater for young offenders, and has recently been greatly enlarged with a closed detention centre. From the village point of view, before the recession this meant that in addition to the existing homes for the Borstal staff at "Oak Hill", some 300 more houses were to be built near Glebe House - the present Officers Mess - once the rectory. The government electoral roll names some 630 people.
I turn onto Alderton Road and now its all road walking back to the start, not great but it has to be done!
I turn onto Hollesley Road heading towards Alderton.
After much walking I enter Alderton.
Alderton was recorded in the Domesday Book as "Alretuna". Local military defences include 3 Napoleonic Martello towers and various 20th-century buildings. Mill Lane marks the site of a mill which stood here from 1796 until its demolition in 1956. An ancient settlement site 600m east of Cedar Court has been identified from aerial photographs, though nothing can be seen on the ground.
The area around Alderton was once a stronghold of Catholicism and within the grounds of Alderton Hall stands an ecclesiastical building, possibly a chapel or refectory dating back to the 12th century and believed to be part of a group of buildings built by the Augustine monks who controlled much of the land on the Bawdsey Peninsula at that period. Alderton Hall boasts both a priest’s hole (a hiding place created for dissident catholic priests during the purge which followed the Reformation and a secret passage leading to the neighbouring church of St. Andrew’s. The passage was known to be haunted and so fearful were the local inhabitants that the Bishop was called in to exorcise the ghost. Whether the passageway was used by the monks as a route to the church or as hiding place for Catholic sympathizers at the time of the Reformation has yet to be discovered, but with the coast just fifteen minutes walk away and Alderton’s close proximity to the Deben Estuary at Ramsholt, this area has long been a popular landing point for Suffolk smugglers. The poet Giles Fletcher was rector of St. Andrew's from 1619 until his death in 1623.
Tales of smuggling abound in the area and the true story of Margaret Catchpole and her efforts to save her lover, captain of a smuggler‘s ship, has much of its action around the village of Alderton. It is possible that bounty was transported along Alderton Hall’s secret passage. But smuggling was not simply a matter of slipping ashore with a bag of tobacco and a keg of wine. The customs men were vigilant and battles between them and the ‘free traders’ are legendary.
Next to the Swan Pub is St Margarets Church.
We know that there was a Saxon chapel here before the Norman Conquest, but the attractive, large church we see today is almost entirely 14th century. That church probably did not include a tower, which was added in the 15th century.
We know that St Margarets was a chapel associated with Winchcombe Abbey in 1125, and the first known rector was n 1283. By that time the chapel had become a full-fledged paris church.
I stop in The Alderton Swan Pub for a pint of Adnams Old Ale.
I walk on down the road and back into Bawdsey again.
The oldest building in the village is the parish church of St Mary's the Virgin which stands in a pretty graveyard mid-way down The Street on the right-hand side. It dates from the thirteenth century although it has undergone several re-buildings, the latest occurring in the 1840s after a fire.
I am now back at the van at Bawdsey Quay after a 12.3 mile walk.
The sun is setting and it is just gorgeous here.
There are 3 other vans staying overnight here too. I cook myself some Chilli n rice and settle down for the night.
Overnight the temperature dropped but tucked up inside my sleeping bag I was plenty warm enough, laying there I could here the sea and then on and off all night the rain came down pitter patting on the van roof.
I awoke to a wet gloomy day, so after Breakfast and tea, I head off home.
I will return in the Summer hopefully when the ferry is running to Felixstowe.
The great walk and stay out was spoiled by the van splurging out black smoke all the way home. Apparently it seems my turbo has gone, Hopefully the van will back on the road soon.
