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andy brown

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Everything posted by andy brown

  1. Due to popular demand I am going to swerve from the path I was on to something that I would have reached some time later , some time around mid; 2014 I was approach by the manager of the common maintainance team who told me that they had recently placed an ad; in the local paper asking if any one had knowledge of a concrete structure that they had at that time recently discovered, it appeared as three box shapes minus one end ,concrete approx three ft X three ft square each box approx; sixteen ft long with the front having the same concrete dimensions and a length approx ten foot this hidden from view by the accumulation of sixty years of vegetation debris ,as yet nobody had come forward with an answer and they themselves had deduced that it or they were foundations for AA guns, would I mind looking at the to see what I thought These lay opposite staples hill or the clump as it was then known on the other side of the road and some thirty yards out on the common and approx eighty yards west of the clump ,if by using the second black German map or pic; you will see a road running diagonally across and down ,from the to right moving down along that road you will come to a dark boat shape ,continue just passed it will be a white smudgy area on the road ,now go directly down and should see what appears to be four white inter connected horse shoes. . Now you might have thought that Chobham museum would have been able to through light on this ,,,,,no forgot army wasn't there ,mind you shop keepers didn't do bad out of them not being there ,,, Anyway went up and walked around them and found that there was no road to them ,to far out on the common to lump shells across from the road and to close together to mount AA guns on ,it appeared that each had a slightly different orientation to the other not much maybe three or four degrees along with an extremely good panaramic view south ,south east across the countryside,mmmmmm .just before radar I thought .
  2. In an effort to put some flesh on the bones of the existence and use of the camp and common in WW2 ,I came across a fact sheet from Regimental museum of the Royal Welch 15th Battalion TA, this relates to their part in training at a number of places including Aldershot and Sunningdale (Chobham common )the latter being only a mile from Sunningdale station, in march 1941 the battalion traveled from here on many occasions to the south downs, here they formed a beach defense task. Another reference came by way of Rowlands and Gill and the north east 1939 - 1945 The Home Guard ,wherein it relates to the 202nd home guard which was just a cover for a nucleus of highly trained men in fact resistance fighters ,officially known as Auxillary units ,from an Auxillary unit four miles from Roland's Gill north of Beamish a gentleman the colliery engineer one Joe Harker recalled that when he was first recruited he had to go to Sunningdale for an initial briefing ,when he arrived he was surprised to see among the other recruits three me that he had shared his compartment with all the way from Newcastle...members of the Auxillary brigade were highly trained in concealment ,sabotage and killing and carried the most sophisticated equipment available.....
  3. On one occasion whilst poking about on the common I was approached by a couple of the common maintainance team lads in their pick up truck saying that they had found something and could I identify it ? They dragged a chain from the back of the truck which even in its corroded state didn't take much to figure out what it was made up for the greater part of dog bone shaped links each about four inches long the type of chain that was and is used on heavy conveyor systems such as you find used in gravel extraction plant , although this had seen a better day having lost many of the links which had been replaced by bending three eighth re bar into the shape of a large paper clip and inserting it into or between the dog bones as required then tack welding the two adjoining ends of the paper clip together there were four or five such repairs in the chain which was approx five foot long one interesting addition was at one end of the chain ,a four pound square weight whilst it was very damaged the letters GPO could be made out cast into one side ,what we had here was a flail chain but not WD stock , having detected chain myself in various places i mentioned this to the lads although I had at the time not dug them up as with chain generally is easy to determine what it is without digging it up , I pointed out where one lay nearby and we parted company ,some weeks later when in the same area I noticed the the chain I had refered to the lads had gone ,,later I found that this one lay outside the maintainance office along with a couple of others ,so it would appear I was tolerated providing I had a use .. anyway these chains were not kosher rather home made which did fit in with the DIY tanks ,this in turn answered another question ,why was everything I found ,fragments of, which took me back to an area where I had recovered a lot of thin fragments of cast iron as if old cast iron fireplaces had been smashed up ,amongst this collection was fragments of White China which at the time I took to be urinals or basins ,then I found another site some eighty yards away with identical materials including the China ,the cast iron I likened to the smoke generator design I remember .
  4. From Dunkirk on with battle Britain raging it would be a brave or foolhardy man that could second guess what the enemy would do next ,they really didn't have any option and definitely no options to squander ,this must have been a moment of utter termoill with many in government ready to through the towel in ,things got worse before they got better thanks to the effort of one man ,it is in this little window of time that I'm looking at Chobham common , contingency plans were needed how to be the most effective with what is to hand ,defence is a priority ,we now have one and a half million men in the recently formed home guard ,these have to fill some of the gaps in our home defense , chobham became a school to instruct groups of men probably 1500 at a time in anything from learning to drive to making a petrol bomb using a smoke generator.to aircraft recognition the list was endless as the were to become part of the vunerable points units ,although some might have had a different mission as all options were on the table....
  5. Before I continue just like to point out something that will be obvious to many well quite a few ,you would really have to been there to understand or feel the mind set of the day even though I was very young when you got on a train there were rifles leaning against the carriage corridor wall the smell of new kit bags ,boot polish ,gun oil ,brasso and cigarette smoke the corridors were packed with soldiers ,the shops were empty with queues outside with everyone clutching their ration books and a wicker shopping baskets,knowing that at any moment they might have to run to the nearest air raid shelter I remember trying to get the bolt out of my dad's 303 that was lying on the carpet ,I couldn't lift it just shunt the bolt bock and forth ,he had to check to see if I'd left a round in the chamber, this was ten days before DDay ,out on the street you could feel (what now they call vibes) the pressure on everyone's faces ,all knew there was something going on but nobody spoke ,I would sit on the door step and watch the hundreds of silver planes going out and the brown and green ones coming back some with a propeller that wasn't turning others you could see daylight through ,I was born into this and thought this was the way life was, didn't occur to me it would ever stop .......
  6. These tanks were there as.long as I can remember and Im pretty sure that they played an integral role in the early cleaning attempts at clearing the common of certain artifacts ,these had long since belonged to the military ,they weren't big more in the order of valentine's ,nither had turrets fitted rather a rough cut piece of one inch trench plate bolted down on the turret ring with what looked like a rubber gasket made of I think conveyer belt , one had odds and sods of assorted metal work welded to the frontal area some bits heavy angle some rsj stumps ,on one side above the track was a welded frame with the lower carcass of a Lister or petter engine ,the other had a sort of home made three point linkage ,well most of it ,same plate on the turret ring.,they both disappeared early seventies. All the hallmarks of a demolition firm .
  7. What I needed and looked for is a photo of the two tanks that lived on what is known as tank hill for that reason ,in the fifties and sixties when your ford pop ,or bullnose Morris was never going to make the coast anyone in this area would take the kids and release them on the common for a couple of hours ,with its line up of ice cream vans and odd hot dog vans it was job done ..the tanks were in full view from staple hill and the ice cream vans many would venture to the tanks for a snap of the kids sitting on them...so it's back to make your own ..
  8. Conspiracy yes waterbeach and chobham but not my conspiracy ,I may have agreed with you ten years ago that's before I started asking questions that got me blocked from the national archives ,when I carried on I was given a face to face warning . As for lack of evidence that's what I got when I posted waterbeach wasn't it ..not even divulging the coordinates stopped the grizzling , if you think the world is a level playing field you must have led a very sheltered life ....
  9. You are both correct they are conspiracy's which is why when I started looking I was warned off , they were conspiracy's back in the day and they are now, this reared its ugly head when I was blocked from the national archives ,if you think that the world is a level playing field you've led a very sheltered life , you may live in a democracy but it doesn't mean that there are'nt those that can't resist the temptation to abuse the system given the opportunity ,I'm lucky I don't live in Belarus ....
  10. Yes it is very much like the waterbeach saga and as with waterbeach chobham is far from finished ,as for conjecture well I gave out the coordinates for water each to the inch ,if that isn't putting your money where your mouth is I don't know what is ....patience.......
  11. Not much to look at but turns out it's one wall of separation sump some eight ft X four ft and approx four ft deep still with its contents ,coagulated oil ,from this sump ran a line of the glazed brick type pipes to a small ditch ,all-around is broken brick and mortar as if the sump was in some building when it was operational..
  12. I apologize if I appear to have zig zaged about with this but most of this took place over three years so you find something out that piece of the jigsaw that didn't fit with anything you had at the time so you have to double back ,,,quite often ..... If you look at the German pic second one in close to the top on the left close to the road running down the page, you will see an installation all on its own this appears to have no obvious vehicular access but never the less I'm sure you recognise it, .pretty sure this disappeared by the end of ww2 or soon after,I traced pipework down the hill ( to the right of the installation in the pic, ) and in a wooded area found this...
  13. Whilst I was out on the common I kept in contact with the Surrey heath maintainance team in gorse lane chobham who for the greater part were quite helpful ,always eager to know what I had turned up ,I not suspecting that their motives were not the same as mine ,at one point I came across a series of hidden soil test rods those that have a variety of metals to test acidity ,when I mentioned this the mood changes more because I questioned what Surrey university was doing on this particular plot ,no answer apart from don't touch any of that equipment and keep away from that area ...So they were looking at what I had been looking at (acidity )or was it a case of what acidity is it ? Here we have a place the army never was a vast army camp that was never there shell cases that came from rifles that were never fired ,and a news paper that siding with the never was and a council that never was .So time to take this apart I thought ...you may have noticed that my attempt at capturing images of the time re the paintings ,they came from a booklet on the subject matter I compiled in response to the never happened ,and strangely the publisher said to me " normally I print our name and address on our printed material for customers but in this case I'm not going to ... What did he know about or should I say who did he know about ...regarding the never was.....
  14. Here is where the story starts to get a little darker ..this letter suggest I should contact Surrey heath council which I did ,only to find that surrey heath council had not been responsible for the common for quite a number of years strange the government didn't know this ,y now I had enough evidence to suggest that a specific area of the common was not as user friendly as one was being led to believe is,the oil and ordinance that I had come across all I approached the Surrey advertiser newspaper with a article I had written highlighting the area in question along with the finds the reporter I approached was very reluctant to publish the article but finally agreed to ,there connotation of what I had given them was nothing like my article citing me as a X files wanna be not I thought very friendly ,but who where they afraid off ?.So now it had got serious
  15. The first pic shows a (on the left) Johnson liquid beef drink BOV-RIL circa 1910 /14 brass bottle seal almost no corrosion from southside and a brass bezel from a protective mask (on the right ) from the north side guess eighty years old almost eaten away with corrosion . 2nd pic Bullet cases and yes I know there is a variation in the periods of manufacture but on the left south side on the right north side ... Oh and the army was never out here strange cases for a poacher ....
  16. Hi not disputing the existence of its acidic value moreover was heading towards pointing out the disparity between the north side amphitheatre and the rest of the common ..
  17. For the most part the area in question will be that to the north side of the M3 as per my upside down map this is where the strikers were detected an area that we'll into the sixties with roll upon roll of rusting battened wire with an impenetrable growth of gorse growing through , here and there were rusting faded WD keep out signs many of the cylindrical concrete road Block bollards were to be seen scattered in the hedge ,the area as a whole was the shape of a amphitheatre ,just to prove that this strange almost hostile unkept area could serve no usefull perpouse it was in the late fifties designated by Surrey cc a land fill site ,a far cry from the garden of Eden they claim it to be now ,an internationally important nature reserve . Most of the items I found out there had a beyond the norm of an expected level of corrosion to a level of disintegration in almost all cases ,yet on more southerly areas of the common the same types of material showed no corrosion at all, any standing water will have a film of oil on it, in the summer months when the water table was low there is this distinct acrid smell of waste oil and areas away from public access ,footpaths or ditched if one peels back four or five inches of peat/ loam you will fin an equivalent depth of black ousey oil permiating the lower strata .but it was the corrosion that intrigued me . So I didn't get any disturbance I would go out there 9/10/11 pm in the summer and one thing I noticed ,you know that summer evening most that you can see over the top of yet it doesn't touch the ground well after ten minutes walking in it or through it my face and hand would start to tingle ,by the time I got home 20 mins in the car the skin would be binding , this I had felt years before when filling new tractor battery's with electrolyte ....so I got some litmus paper held in a clothes peg and walked pm again suprise suprise the pink tuned blue ,tried it in the sand one area turned dark blue ..... No wonder they wanted it a land fill ....but what had been going on her ?
  18. It could be said that finding three strikers doesn't prove this was a smoke school which is where I was until I found that evidence was right in front of my eyes thanks to the Luftwaffe ! If you look at the second picture at the start of the post you can see a road running across from let to right this is the Chertsey road 386 ,slightly below is a thin line running parallel with the road this a narrow gauge railway from the camp to the (what is now longcross road car park ) I recall there being railway lines being in the car par sixty years ago and the remains of a couple embedded in the concrete some 200yard away crossing the staple hill road . As the greater part of the common turns into a big when it rains wheeled vehicles do not fair well out there ,so if it was required that smoke be made from a moving vehicle for the purpose of trading what better than a railway ,although the pics are not good smoke can be seen eminating from the line about a third way from the left , I mentioned that as far as I could see smoke making here was quite short lived for certain reasons ! Which it is why most likely the line doesn't feature in any later maps or publications.
  19. Access to the common 1955/6..longcross road staple hill junction...
  20. As far as any local authority's were concerned apart from the tank factory which by the way does'nt appear on any ordanance survey maps just shows marsh land ,nothing military ever happened out on the common yet here was a vast camp part on the common and part on sunningdale golf course this was definitely 14/18 stock and probable used between the wars for basic training etc; not until mid 30s did it appear to have a new lease of life ,it was the pioneer corps who were at the time involved in regenerating places such as this also involved in use of smoke generators . Going back to the pic of the land mine strikers you will notice that they have hammer marks ,dents and rounded edges these were called exploders by the pioneer lads , once the generator had been filled with a mixture of waste oil ,diesel and water a flare cartridge was inserted into the tube on the side of the generator then the exploder played into the tube the operative then struck the brass firing pin which in turn activated the flare so igniting the mixture ,the resulting smoke output could be controlled with various flaps built into the sides of the generator. When you think of the volunteers from all walks of life who were likely to be trained in the use of the generator there were many no doubt had never hammered a nail into a piece of wood so the likelihood of hitting that firing pin within three attempts was highly unlikely hence the dents . As there was a severe shortage of anti aircraft guns and personnel to man them smoke generators were a quick solution to be able to afford some protection to factories and important insulations ..
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