This is the full story of Shoreham’s Radar Station: RAF Truleigh Hill as researched and written by Roy Taylor. This 110 page book was written in 2007 and then updated in 2008. It offers a fascinating insight into the technology and operation of the RAF Truleigh Hill ROTOR Radar station. Likewise it opens the doors on the life at RAF Truleigh Hill Camp in Stoney Lane, built to support the Radar operations. The book comprehensively covers the sites and the personnel posted there. Click the book cover to open. Hard copies are available from the author.
In preparing photos to load on the website we made an interesting discovery when sorting through the Marlipins Museum photos which has led to an article for the Shoreham Herald appearing.
During the First World War, the British Admiralty designed eight towers codenamed M-N that were to be built and positioned in the Straits of Dover to protect allied merchant shipping from German U-boats. Designed by civilian Guy Maunsell, the towers were to be linked together with steel nets and armed with two 4-inch guns with the idea of closing the English Channel to enemy ships.
However, by the end of the war in 1918 only one such tower had been completed, at the then-cost of one million pounds, and was located in Shoreham Harbour, awaiting deployment. While another part-built tower would eventually be dismantled in 1924, there remained the completed 92-foot-tall metal cylinder sitting on a raft of concrete.
In 1920 the completed tower was towed by two paddle-wheel tugs to the Nab rock, a rock in the deep-water approach to the eastern Solent and previously marked by a lightship. Buoyancy was provided by the honeycomb construction of the concrete base, creating 18 watertight compartments. When these were flooded, the structure sank and settled to rest at an angle of 3 degrees from vertical towards the northeast – a characteristic tilt which is obvious to this day.
The story of the construction of the two mystery towers:
We have created a new feature – a Blog. This is a digest of some of the best mini articles created on the discussion forum. You’ll find them in the menu under Blog, or here: http://www.shorehambysea.com/category/blog/
These blog posts have a comment feature and are also included in the search system, and Google searches. If you are a registered email subscriber, you will be sent an email when a new blog post is published. This is in a similar way to email notifications that are sent when a full article is published, listed in the menu under Recent Updates.
Bungalow Town properties were known by name, not the street numbering system used across the river in Shoreham Town and it was first necessary to identify the location and names of the bungalows at Widewater beach. This has been carried out using photographs, Ordnance Survey maps of the period, Street Directories and the 1911 Census Returns – all have inexactitudes to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, the majority of these bungalows were lost to storms and it wasn’t just one storm that caused the bungalows to be
Not Shoreham related exactly but such a fascinating, rare and historic collection of naval photographs from Shorehambysea.com long standing member and Shoreham resident John Lyne that we had no hesitation in including them on the website. The photos record some of the ships and events from John’s father William Joseph Lyne’s service with the Royal Navy during WW1 and after. William served initially from 1911 to 1921 and saw action at Heligoland Bight and Jutland. Called up again during WW2 he participated in the Dunkirk withdrawal followed by a posting to Lowestoft providing minesweeping training to Scandinavian refugee sailors. Continue reading “John Lyne Collection”
John Bartlett is descended from the Winton and Maple families of Shoreham. His mother Daphne Maple married Robert Bartlett, both of Old Shoreham, in 1940. The Bartletts came from Lancing and settled in Old Shoreham where John’s grandfather was the collector at the Toll Bridge. John has kindly provided us with a selection of his family photographs dating from the early 1900’s.
1. Robert Bartlett senior, the father of George, was the Lancing Stationmaster and Postmaster seen here outside the post office with his postmen, in Lancing’s North Road.
2. This postcard shows the backwater at Lancing after the 1910 storm. The scene appears to be the coast road looking up South Street with the Three Horseshoes pub on the right.
Collector Alan Humphries has kindly allowed us to scan a compilation of photographs and postcards from his unique Southwick and Kingston collection. The images have been especially selected to provide an evocative picture of the area as it once was.
Joined Neil De Ville at the auctioning of these eight old photos and managed to purchase them.
Pencilled notes on the reverse of some indicate they were photos of Catty Norman and his family who’s bungalow was destroyed by the 1913 storm. No bungalow names were shown but we were able to identify them by by a painstaking trawling through this website’s collections comparing them with similar photos. We thought it might be interesting enough to include an explanation of the identification process and this follows after the eight photos.
