Chobham common

[andy brown]

1 hour ago, Ashcollection said:

its another conspiracy 

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 ....

[andy brown]

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 ....

[andy brown]

3 minutes ago, andy brown said:

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 ....

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 ..

[andy brown]

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 .

[andy brown]

18 hours ago, andy brown said:

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 .

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 .......

[andy brown]

44 minutes ago, andy brown said:

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 .......

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....

[andy brown]

19 hours ago, andy brown said:

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....

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 .

[andy brown]

On 10/2/2021 at 1:13 PM, andy brown said:

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 .

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.....

[Ashcollection]

hmm see Andy now why don't you start your posts with the last messages, with what you have actually found out. There's loads of places in the country that where early 40's defences just after Dunkirk, most have just been forgotten, its not any conspiracy just at the time it was local guys doing it and they are dead and what they did has been lost. Fascinating to find though. Bit like the home guard training area and the "tank in the orchard" They found it and they dug it up then found the evidence that the whole valley had been set up as a killing ground with ditches and defences. All found from an old story that a tank was buried there. so yes it does happen but forget the conspiracy line, it don't help the cause of bringing forgotten history to light.

[andy brown]

4 hours ago, Ashcollection said:

hmm see Andy now why don't you start your posts with the last messages, with what you have actually found out. There's loads of places in the country that where early 40's defences just after Dunkirk, most have just been forgotten, its not any conspiracy just at the time it was local guys doing it and they are dead and what they did has been lost. Fascinating to find though. Bit like the home guard training area and the "tank in the orchard" They found it and they dug it up then found the evidence that the whole valley had been set up as a killing ground with ditches and defences. All found from an old story that a tank was buried there. so yes it does happen but forget the conspiracy line, it don't help the cause of bringing forgotten history to light.

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 .

 

 

[andy brown]

54 minutes ago, andy brown said:

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 .

Below pic,may not be the design of the originals but I'm sure you'll get the idea ,these must have gone early ww2 ,lucky it shows the foundations in the Luftwaffe pics , guess that one of the early RADAR trucks in would have replaced them ,although there were a lot of these similar listening post in the immediate area and I've heard it said that they were not for the consumption of the general public in the first instance more for the protection of the royal family them being German in ww1 ...fits with this set being about seven miles from Windsor castle ,give them just enough time to catch up with the days death total on the Somme before slipping into the bunker ..thought came to me that if this is what I think it is then who s doing the listening and where ,few weeks later came back with 808 and found wiring leading away from pods east ,now all of this side of the road is a slope give or take 1/7 old money ..the wiring signal disappeared just after the white patch in the road which is a gateway Into that area (see pic) just as that signal disappeared a much stronger signal burst into life ....rebar ..buried ,came up with box shape twelve X twelve, slightly down the hill pick two signals faint about four foot apart going down hill follow gets louder ,fifty foot from rebar scrape away leaves find two cast iron 4 inch drainage pipes so hear we have our listening room .....

 

[andy brown]

1 minute ago, andy brown said:

[andy brown]

On 10/5/2021 at 4:54 PM, andy brown said:

This is the entrance to the pods and listening room ,although it has existed  all of this time ,it seems that nobody In recent years questioned where it led to ,there were two heavy angle iron gates.where the wooden bar is now , couriosity you would have thought would have prompted "what's behind the gates"

m

[Ashcollection]

9 minutes ago, andy brown said:

m

Think you will find a huge amount of people think "whats through the gates" in my younger days when I could hop over tall fences before getting a beating from the land owner I often looked behind the gates!  been inside about 30 ROC posts, also control towers, scrap yards, closed mod bases, closed factories. all would be considered at least trespass! Not everyone is as brave as you Andy. A closed gate means keep out. and now I'm fat old and slow it does to me now as well haha 

[andy brown]

25 minutes ago, Ashcollection said:

Think you will find a huge amount of people think "whats through the gates" in my younger days when I could hop over tall fences before getting a beating from the land owner I often looked behind the gates!  been inside about 30 ROC posts, also control towers, scrap yards, closed mod bases, closed factories. all would be considered at least trespass! Not everyone is as brave as you Andy. A closed gate means keep out. and now I'm fat old and slow it does to me now as well haha 

In 1959 I drove my ford e83w van from one side of the common to the other ....at night for a bet ....I look at the place now and think I wouldn't like to try it In a 4x4...

[andy brown]

19 hours ago, andy brown said:

In 1959 I drove my ford e83w van from one side of the common to the other ....at night for a bet ....I look at the place now and think I wouldn't like to try it In a 4x4...

These  two pi's are the before and after of what I call the admin, block , some sixty years apart ,I am standing with my back to the entrance to the pods  opposite what was an area devoid most plant life the admin, block stood in place of the trees on the left ,again this was a building the authorities new nothing about and I had a hard job convincing them of its existence and it's connection with the pods ,wasn't until I gave them a demonstration physically by GPR tracing the services from the road to the foundations and back across the road to the listening room pit did they accept grudgingly that I was right ,the whole of this patch has been left to grow in an unkept fashion unlike their fastidious conviction at maintaining pathways well away from  the it didn't happen bits I've uncovered .not that it's war or mod related but to the right of the gate is staple hill or the clump upon which stood five tall pine trees these could be seen in the distance from any quarter of the common and were the trade mark of the common for many years , between the clump and the road was a open area some 150 yards long and 30 yards deep where two ice cream vans would park of a weekend this being a local beauty spot ..some even parked on the opposite side of the road in the hight of summer ,sometime early sixties council decided to deny access to this parking area by digging a trench   between the road and the parking area ,what happened next seems to be a mystery to the Surrey council  and local residents alike but to me it was a dot on the card that their action was not going unpunished , they woke one morning to find their pride and joy the five pine trees had been chopped down ...it didn't occur to them obviously that ice cream vendors who could no long trade there might be a little upset or that they where Italian ...touch of the godfather...

[MrEd]

The drawings are very pretty but aren’t actual ‘evidence’ 

 

the gate isn’t evidence either. The common was used by the army for training up until the early 2000’s and there is the longcross barracks (still there but abandoned) near what was the longcross camp and test ground other side of the motorway. Connected to it by an under pass. 
 

there was a number of these gates off the roads that cross the common and invariably used for access to the common by land management agents or the military.

I had a crash on staple hill road circa 2002/3, late at night bombing along on my way back from work (I worked in Sunningdale and lived in Woking) and I came across a column of soldiers on a night hike crossing the road just before the staple hill car park - I was travelling in the direction of chertsey.  On with the anchors and I ended up in the scrub, thankfully no one hurt.

that incident was here

https://goo.gl/maps/pgzfCfTMd9aqU8nt8

They were crossing at that gate. Which was open. I presume they had come all the way from the other side of the motorway through the underpass.

 

Edited October 8, 2021 by MrEd

[andy brown]

1 hour ago, MrEd said:

The drawings are very pretty but aren’t actual ‘evidence’ 

 

the gate isn’t evidence either. The common was used by the army for training up until the early 2000’s and there is the longcross barracks (still there but abandoned) near what was the longcross camp and test ground other side of the motorway. Connected to it by an under pass. 
 

there was a number of these gates off the roads that cross the common and invariably used for access to the common by land management agents or the military.

I had a crash on staple hill road circa 2002/3, late at night bombing along on my way back from work (I worked in Sunningdale and lived in Woking) and I came across a column of soldiers on a night hike crossing the road just before the staple hill car park - I was travelling in the direction of chertsey.  On with the anchors and I ended up in the scrub, thankfully no one hurt.

that incident was here

https://goo.gl/maps/pgzfCfTMd9aqU8nt8

They were crossing at that gate. Which was open. I presume they had come all the way from the other side of the motorway through the underpass.

 

 

[andy brown]

On 10/7/2021 at 2:44 PM, andy brown said:

m

 

[andy brown]

46 minutes ago, andy brown said:

 

I'm amazed ...if you look carefully at any of my pretty pictures you will see that they have the co_ ordinates printed on them also dated and signed ,no evidence sorry old chap what do you want me to do ? Rebuild the structures to their original state , alternatively you could go to the common and use the co_ordinates  ,I assure you that they are just as I left them ,per haps a little overgrown ,when I first when to the common about 56 I went with a couple of mates cause they were holding a sale day up there ,now every road those days had booms with barbed wire on staple hill would have it's red flag flying ,we watched as dingo,Daimler scout cars .bren gun carriers big old Austin gantry six wheelers and a variety of other vehicles rumbled around the common ,staples hill road had a great marquee and in front a twenty foot high staging ,up on the staging were what looked like a gathering of cinema commissionaires with more gold braid and colour of uniform than you could wave a stick at ..sorry didn't bring the evidence out with me ...but I did run faster than the porky military police sargent.....it's all out there if you go and look ....

[terryb]

As a nipper, I lived close by Chobham clump, and recall two tracked hulls on the opposite side of the road by the car park, on the sloping ground. There was also a large rivetted steel target plate with numerous armour piercing rounds punching through it (many an hour with dad's club hammer trying to knock them out) but really apart from the filming for carry on and hammer films there, not much else was found.

Do you recall when gacious pond was dredged by a pair of traction engines, and what came out?

 

[andy brown]

1 hour ago, terryb said:

As a nipper, I lived close by Chobham clump, and recall two tracked hulls on the opposite side of the road by the car park, on the sloping ground. There was also a large rivetted steel target plate with numerous armour piercing rounds punching through it (many an hour with dad's club hammer trying to knock them out) but really apart from the filming for carry on and hammer films there, not much else was found.

Do you recall when gacious pond was dredged by a pair of traction engines, and what came out?

 

If you go back on this thread to 30. June there is one of my pretty pictures of the tanks on tank hill,. I recall the pond being dredged but didn't hear what they pulled out . What happened to the tanks ,I recall going past mid seventies they were there but I could see the tops of two I think JCB,s down in the dip at the bottom of the hill ,I know they resculptured the side of the hill for a footpath   but didnt  know if they buried the tanks at that time ....but it was about that time they disappeared ...what do you know about the bunker that was built just opposite the longcross road car park ,the ground backs on to the little housing estate with its access road in longcross road .I delivered some rebar to the site when I was doing a bit of casual for a firm ,had to unload on the road ,they were pouring concrete into that place for 18 months .did ask at gorse lane office ,but they just blanked me in 2014 ......

[Bob Grundy]

On 10/7/2021 at 3:31 PM, andy brown said:

In 1959 I drove my ford e83w van from one side of the common to the other ....at night for a bet ....I look at the place now and think I wouldn't like to try it In a 4x4...

An E83W van, they were crackers.....

[andy brown]

1 hour ago, Bob Grundy said:

An E83W van, they were crackers.....

What ever happened to LowTec;

[MrEd]

Yeah a hand drawn picture with coordinates printed on it still isn’t evidence of anything tbh.