andy brown

This little booklet dropped through every letter box in the UK mid 1938 ,it's appearance caused many to feel isolated and somehow left to their own devices ,much confusion followed until the forming of the local defense volunteers ,what occured in this and later years is well documented so although the period is related there is no reason for me to go there ,save to say it was after the formation of the LDV that chobham common became home to many of these volunteers whilst they trained in a wide range of defense pursuits .

Hi AmmoMan .. Thanks for the post ,and yes I'm only down the road ,will catch up with you when covieniant....re the attachment ,yes I have seen that quite informative ..although where I'm heading with this post isn't included in your attachment ,just a small window in time ,but all will be revealed soon.......

In just using a metal detector you are limited to a minimal depth and as this place had in its time seen a great deal of tank activity mid forties onward also in the sixties it had bulldozers and scrapers out there along with the firm I believe came from stockbridge with red cabbed ql bedfords that carried lime for agricultural purposes I remember they had the chrome Perkins badge on the front grill these had a yellow tapered spreader body as with road gritters which would spread lime over the area of the common nearest the tank factory ,using a whites 808 detector gave much better results being able to trace service lines such as water , gas and electric supply lines ,so even if a building had been demolished with no sign of its existence one can follow the shadow of its services to and from other non existing structures and get a good idea of the layout of what was once there , apart from the obvious services I came across a two inch pipe that appeared to do a circuit of the common which had at one time carried waste oil supporting the possibility of smoke generators , these I remember were greasey black boxes the size of a small fridge with flaps and apetures around the sides as a kid I had seen them around Hendon aerodrome and hawkers factory , but this is another subject matter that fell on stoney ground when ever I mentioned it ,nobody thus far has even admitted to knowing what I was talking about when questioned..

As the common had recently been upgraded to an area of outstanding beauty and had undergone a number of cosmetic improvements to give it that user friendly atmosphere where children could collect butterfly's ,moths and the like what we're land mine strikers ,303. Shell cases and corroded bits of ordinance doing out there I wondered ,Even found few live 303 rounds which I took to Woking police station , all of which I bought to the attention of the local council who told me in no uncertain terms" The army was never out there " despite the fact that two rusting tanks had been standing out there for forty years and had vanished during the first cosmetic clean up ,so I contacted Surrey heritage archive who they said had nothing about the common in their records .Sent pics of strikers to imperial war museum as I was unsure as to their proper identity ," don't know" Woolwich arsenal, "don't know" contacted porton down ,not obliged to give advise to public ,however a staff member later contacted me in his own time and sent me drawings of the identical strikers in situ in land mines . Had these been used as they were intended they wouldn't exist and as they all showed signs of damage from continual hammering of the firing pin what had they been used for the answer lay in the fact they were each different colours camouflage colours on had the remains of a transfers label " constabulary directorate" which implied that they were as would be a tool to be used repeatedly which eventually led me to smoke schools ,trading camp for the use and application of smoke generation ...

Sorry last pic should be first ...trouble of trying to do it on a phone

oThe first picture is of land mine strikers found out on the common although this was not what they had been used for ,the second picture not that good was taken by the Germans 1942 showing the chobham tank factory in the top left corner,most of the common has been churned up with tank testing.The third pic is a follow on going west from the previous picture ,it is this picture that shows a cross road left hand side of pic,to the left of the cross road can be seen a camp comprising of 150 +nissen huts and serve buildings most of which I think from the latter part of ww1 in pre ww2 could have I believe served for VP training ,also a smoke school ,looking to add to the limited knowledge I have especially the years 1930 / 40

Thanks nice pics , not any of those ...well it was 30+ years ago...

Not Salzburg Salisbury .........

Historic find. About thirty odd years ago I purchased and sold on a small Hunslet narrow gauge shunting engine from a yard north of Basingstoke at a guess I would say it was earl sixties and I was told it came from the munitions tunnels on Salzburg plain this fitted with the fact that the scrap man / owner did a lot of work for the mod born out by the assortment of army related items plotted up in the yard the engine had variable gauge a small cab and was fitted with what at the time was a Perkins 4108 engine could have been a 499 .a chubby little machine , along with this came a number of trucks with wooden drop sides they would have been about twelve foot long by four foot wide ,the timber appeared to have never been out in the weather looking in very good condition ..This was one of those times where one felt they shouldn't be scrapped so I rang round a number of the narrow gauge railway clubs ,most of whom expected me to donate the items ,eventually I sold the the engine and two trucks to the Leighton buzzard railway society if they are still going they may still have them . On a later visit to the yard I was shown into a barn where stood a immaculate for want of a better description locomotive in Goodwood green livery with gold lining it stood on a section of line which gave it a larger than life appearance ,as I recall it had a gardener engine ,the cab was only inches higher than the bonnet with quarter curved windows tucked between the curved roof and side of cab ,again I was told this came from the same place and on offer at ,£1000 .having seen that the narrow gauge society's were all but destitute i didnt takes up the offer ,heard later that it had bought buy a chap that had track round his estate so at least it dodged being scrapped .also found a Vickers bulldozer in the brambles ...all gone now.....

We could split hairs over this forever and a day ,one thing I found when the plans for the site were first published was the area of my interest would eventually be the playing / sports field to a proposed secondary school and a small part of the school itself...The whole site I think was estimated to take until 2035 to complete some 25000 houses and a railway station so it depends where the burial site figures in the program as to whether or not it features in the near or distant future.. Not that that this has any direct association with waterbeach apart from the people involved .Being blocked from national archives at the time proved to me that I was treading on someone's corns ,in response I started to look at another site that the same company was developing one that I had some historic knowledge of , again it wasn't long before someone became worried that I was looking under rocks that shouldn't be looked under.what transpired was to me very intriguing and got me a verble warning to stop what I was doing .The second site has been part of the mod / war dept for almost or at least one hundred years .There is a great deal I do not know about this second site and was thinking of putting it to the forum on a separate thread but as I'm not flavour of the month in some quarters I thought I might be pushing my luck .... Suffice to say this like waterbeach has all the hallmarks of a longstanding cover up ....

I'm sure your right about what you have pointed out.but there have been many occasions where the first you hear of it is when it's gone ..although I should point out that the one deciding factor in this is the environment agency they hold sway over what gets done and when and the developers have to live with it .. All that apart my reasons are my reason if there's blame it's all mine ,at the end of the day I'm sure there are many people out there who would like to see ,would like be a witness to something not often seen before it gets spirited away ,there is amongst this load of scrap a wide variety of camouflage colour's what theatre of war did they operate in, did someone's grandad ,great uncle or distant relation live in it for weeks at a time . No I would like to see the mystery unfold in a sane and controlled manner . Ps I was told they had been decommissionrd but they can't act on my say so can they it all becomes rather more complicated than drag them out and cart them away doesn't it.

Unfortunately that what this thread is a waiting game ,I Answer questions that people ask to the best of my ability until as such time as the aprons are removed will any body know if I'm wrong or right ,I don't control what goes on at this site where their priority is to build house's on a 300 +acre site ,I wish it wasn't just as much as everybody else . Having said that I live 170 mile round trip from the place and as there is no access to the area in question there isn't much chance of seeing whether or not there is any activity near or on the aprons ,there is however a layby of sorts on the A10 mid way between the traffic lights at Denny end road and the ( going north) business park roundabout ,this layby is approx 1200 metres from the aprons ,in a few weeks the leaves will drop and one should be able to see across to the aprons , I figure that if it is what I say then they would have to mag off the spare parts that were crushed on top of the tanks ,that would require a fairly large machine which could be seen accros that distance ...layby is really only accessible traveling south as it's on a fast bend ,layby has more than it fair share of deep holes .. Apron 52 °16' 49" N. 0° 11' 21" E Layby 52° 16' 59" N 0° 10' 17" E Having dealt with this lot ,agents and Hammond I wouldn't trust them more so because of the fortunes involved ..

Some where I've a paper re a chap that was delegated to go from Newmarket post war to a hanger at Mepal once a month on his motor bike to check the oil and water in 400,bren gun carriers stored there strangely when I was an apprentice at a ford main dealer about 1957 400 V8 engines came in to be overhauled ,did about two weeks in the engine shop cleaning parts an labeling them couldn't breath In there as babbit was always on the boil for metaling the journals.

As a ten year old I wasn't given a portfolio at the meeting .the tanks could have been in lieu of or we might have owed the Canadians or they could have been those that my father and others had swopped for scrap ones in the low as countries in 45 ..take your pick .. Burial site not checked by munitions clearance team ..as I keep saying scrambled signal on gpr when I tried .but wasn't bothered as map he gave me in 1959 matched the aprons exactly so wasn't as problem ..ps do have pics of tanks three years before burial and no you can't have them yet ,took me ten years and a great deal of expense to get them. ..... Patience........

Good evening There are quite a few people on the forum. Who could dot all the I,s and cross all the t,s on the answer to that question. Basically at the end of the war the U,S, were now the big boys on the block ,a position that was to cost us dear president Truman saw the newly elected Labour government as a load of communist with there need for sociall reform and the NHS...there were five dollars to the pound US could not trade with the world because of such a strong pound and that hurt ...but we were broke Attlee dispatched lord Halifax to the U,Sto get a loan he represented all that they hated about UK's upper class or class system they gave him a quarter of what he had wanted along with enough strings attached to hang every one of us ..devalue the almost half ,you owe us so many billions on lease lend agreement ,whatever you have still got you have to pay for ,we don't want back if you don't pay for it and scrap it we want the scrap price, alternatively you will have to bury it unserviceable,....those payments went on till Ed Balls made the last payment early ,2000... Although some of the strngs are still attach to this day.... America has a great sense of humour so they say..but can't stand being laughed at. That a rough outline but you'd need a hundred pages to be a little more precise ..

It's been a game of patience all along ....A correction the tanks are for the greater part various marks of Churchill and the lesser breeds he did rattle off some of them on odd occasions but for the life of me I can't recall the exact details I recall bridge layers and did ask if any were German and I think he said two or three also that where there were gaps they would squash in the odd bren gun carrier or Oxford carrier something I forgot to mention he said the pits were lined with railway sleepers ...lined I presumed was lined not just the floor ... Re the letters I posted from Hammond I wasn't inferring that there was something wrong with them ,only included as a point of interest ... Ps when he was demobbed in 46 he didn't wander far from the only thing he knew he worked in REME 10 command wks, mill hill east until 1954 last five years a vehicle examiner ...home counties.......so he did his fair share ......

Not I'm afraid how Hammond would see it not as there are multiple tens of millions in this and other sites ,tanks would be something he doesn't need ,an irritant a nuisance deficit .he and I have locked horns before ,he is a developer first and a M.P. second..

Thanks for explaning that .. Not sure that I wouldn't get the same short shrift that I received at Kew, the answers one is likely to get I would have thought would be akin to those I have already received from the likes of Hammond who seems to have his finger on the pulse of every move I have made over the last ten years .what is it these letters do you think would achieve ,this is a can of worms I've been trying to prize the lid off without much success for a long time. The lengths I have gone to have resulted in threats that have arrived where you know you've touched a nerve but that's another story... As this is your suggestion what would you expect the end result to be ?.. .

Thank you for the advice .but you lost me after ( do an )

Thought it might be of interest to show these one from MP one from mod two years apart ..reality is both are one and the same ,MP Hammond under signed all communications to me no matter who sent them ... Thought about speaking to tank museum for a few weeks and eventually rang museum curator ,the words buried tanks had barely passed my lips when I was hit with ,,,,good lord how many of these ridiculuse phone calls do you think I get a week .....and phone went dead ...some much for customer relations......that was 2015... Regarding first letter Hammond I had put it to him that despite his insistence that the site was clean no checks whatsoever had been done on the area that I had identified as the burial site ..the corporal from munitions said when I brought the subject up ( well if they find something with a digger they can always call us back in to sort it ) by coincidence I pointed a number of sites I had been on that were said to be clean and had turned out to be anything but citing one at Bramley near Basingstoke clean till the JCB hit a barrel of mustard gas corporal laughed said have you been there I said about twelve years ago when they found the gas ,he said you want to see it now mod gave up with it the more we dug the more we found so they ring fenced it with two fences and gave it best cause stuff was everywhere.......

Above letter received some six years ago from th e gentleman who dealt with the tank plates ,although at the time of his writing this this to me had been retired from southerbys for some time but remembered the plates and myself ,not that this is overly important in the way of things but might placate the claims of lack of evidence ..... Strange but it seems never to occured to some that I am the evidence !!

Forgot to mention in above + two oak leaves....