Time Team S15-E08 Blitzkrieg on Shooters Hill, London

1940 and Europe is rapidly succumbing to the onslaught of Hitler's Blitz cre as country after country Falls one small band of exhausted troops boys and old men prepare to defend their City against the mechanized might of the German Army if they fail hit will seize one of his most prized targets London the key to success for Hitler's forces if they were going to invade Britain of course we now know that didn't happen the Germans never crossed the channel but for a desperate time at the beginning of World War II Britain had to prepare for an attack which would have changed the course of history all around me here on Shooter's Hill lie the hidden remains of those preparations pill boxes anti-tank weapons massive explosive booby traps this is archaeology from a time when Invasion and a fight to the death were very real prospects right here and we've got just three days to find out what's left of [Music] it [Music] Shooters Hill lies on the main road into London from Kent essential for any army attacking the city from the south coast of England once they reach this High ground and invading force would have commanding views over the capital and most of it would be within range of heavy artillery and the threat of invasion was all too real in 1940 there are still the remains of mysterious concrete bunkers strange structures and military hardware all over Shooters Hill we've been invited here by local archaeologist Andy Brockman who believes it's time we started to appreciate the archaeology of suburban Britain preparing to fight to the death do people around here know what an important place this was in the second world war some do and some don't I mean obviously there's there some people have a direct memory of it others there's word of mouth and local folklore some have no idea what was going on here and like where we're walking now it's public park and kids play here and people walk the dogs and yet it was a hi activity in 1940 to 44 and absolutely crucial part of our history Francis how do you feel about doing a London story oh I love it absolutely love it it the thing is Andy's discovered on the top of this hill in South London a a microcosm of second world war archaeology and the trouble is like so much of wartime archaeology it's Vanishing and some of the best evidence has been found on Andy's air photo down there what we've got here is a it's a 1944 air photograph from the RF and if you look just there that corner of where we're standing now we think that that's a bar CH what barrage balloon tether well London was ringed with barrage balloons they were big things they were filled with gas they were about the size of a house so they had terrific lifting power but at the same time they had heavy steel cables so if you flew below the barrage balloon it cut your wings off on these cables and it had to be anchored To The Ground by a sucking great lump of concrete so I think that's what we got out there but finding a scking great piece of concrete belonging to a barrage balloon is just just the start and he's identified all sorts of possible targets over a half mile stretch of Shooters Hill this area was hit by enemy aircraft bombs before we start though we have to be introduced to the very real hazards of Excavating World War II sites treat everything that you don't recognize as if it might be ammunition the archaeology also needs getting used to barrage balloons filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas were massive but we're looking for their securing points which are frankly just bits of concrete with iron bars stuck in them and this isn't the sort of thing geop Fizz are used to looking for at this Cutting Edge of archaeology the rules are still being written all I'm seeing is what I would consider to be modern rubbish to be honest it's all Ferris iron material lumps of concrete reinforced maybe but that's the sort of stuff we're looking for I know they are well it looks like we're in the right place then so we're going to dig a series of test pits to investigate the strongest anomalies on John's GE Fizz to see if that can help us sort out what his results actually show but you going be quite challenging a it this uh Mar it isn't it just be mindful that you know there might be devices in here this is pretty impressive Andy big question is what is it it's a very good question and the short answer is we don't know we're also starting to look at some of the other defenses in the area and a lot of the archaeology on Shooter's Hill suggests that they were preparing for something Unthinkable today a fight against a fullscale military invasion of Britain guy what state was the country in when these defenses were built it's quite difficult to appreciate that now because of course we know that the war would end in 1945 with Britain having won it in 1940 it's it's an extremely different situation Hitler had issued directive number 16 which is Operation Sea line this is all the plan for the barges The Invasion process if this man had succeeded invading Britain that would have meant every able-bodied man between the age of 17 and 45 in Britain being carted off to concentration camps and work camps and then there was the Black Book of all the notable individuals that the Nazis wanted to wipe out and these included people like no coward simply for being homosexual writers like George Orwell for ridiculing the Nazis and HG Wells just because he was a socialist so I mean it was a really quite extraordinary and terrifying prospect that Britain faced in 1940 so did we have any confidence that anything could stop this Invasion well that about confidence they certainly have plans in place and what the Home Defense executive decreed under General iride was to develop a set of defenses a whole network of what were called stop lines the whole purpose of these stop lines was to stop Invasion forces getting in land to delay them to get them off the main roads into flooded ground into the field stop them moving now in London here there was the outer ring which is obviously equivalent to the M25 now um around the edge here there was the the middle ring here on which Shooters Hill is based now this is at the edge of the of the urban area and then there's a central core around whiteall and the TS there which was the real heart of government it's a massive massive Network and of course Shooter's Hill is only one small part of what is a massive National concept for stopping this Invasion most of the stopline installations have been lost or destroyed over the last 70 years so it's crucial that any surviving examples are properly investigated this used to be the garden of Colonel bagnold who used to have a big Victorian Villa here and the local fol law has it that this was built for to be an air raid shelter for his staff but it doesn't look right to be a domestic air raid shelter the military people say that this kind of that shape there is there to deflect incoming rounds yeah which says it's military so did they have a water supply not that we know of but if you look back behind us there's a flange pipe in the ground there that's right and and there's others that run off through the woods in that direction we just don't know what they are telephone wires going down them we know they were laying wires all across the hill here from all the various installations well it seems to me we don't know a lot about this Mt so if you don't know something the only thing to do is to dig isn't it Matt that's the way so our second investigation starts over in oxley's wood to see if this bunker is an air raage shelter or actually part of one of the London stop lines such a recent period of British history both our sites are presenting our diggers with a number of challenges outside their normal digging experience I mean is it part of it is it just SN off you can't really tell gy rusted metal and rusted metal the problem is this is the modern rubbish we normally dig through to get to the Roman or Anglo-Saxon layers underneath this is obviously the end it looks like I know I think this is lead cannot but thinking that it is something electrical but it looks it looks very much like a lightning where I work we got something very similar it's a 19 purus building see here's the thing with it with this with this bar barrage balloon job you spent all your time thinking about barage balloons tethering It To The Ground you don't actually think about the minor practicalities of what happens if one gets struck by lightning with all those metal cables coming straight down to the ground that's right that's going to affect the P chaps on the ground you know I think it's safe to say some of our team are finding this sort of archaeology a bit bewildering but thankfully this site has one advantage you don't get on a Roman or Anglo-Saxon dig as I recall it there was no winch on the ground the winch remained on on the Lorry because that's the the chap controlled it from there eyewitnesses who were here when the structures were investigating first appeared if you see any lumps like that that's what it was right so it sounds like we're hitting concrete down there it could be one of those tether posts very well well be ah oh yeah look there you go over at the bunker site in oxley's wood what seemed like a straightforward clearance job is now getting much more complicated oh what you got well look what we've got we've got another one of these flange pipes here there's bits of metal sticking out there there's something sticking out there hang on another one that implies there's another one lurking somewhere it's here all right yeah do you know what they are no we don't they could be to do with drainage they could be to do with electrics they could be to do with sewage they could be anything Matt can you really apply the same archaeological criteria to a site like this in the way that you could for something Norman or Roman well I I think in some ways you can because there's there's there's nothing there's no real evidence that these are anything to do with this bunker at all when when we first saw this I me the first question we thought was is it underneath this this mound in which case it was out of use by the time all this all this stuff was built up against it so you can do relative dating you can find out what came before and what came after what absolutely and when we get a section through this then we can look for dump lines and so on and maybe work out from that whether it was dug by hand built by hand or whether they got a digger in to do it for instance so far we've been dealing with the architecture of War a drain yeah a drain that's why it sounded Hollow exactly yeah yeah but we're also now finding evidence of the people who Mann these defenses here we go oh oh it's a button here it's your field isn't it Andy it certainly is what you reckon on oh that gunmetal button uh typical for British soldiers normally worn on trousers in fact when you put your braces onto it when you bend over when you're working they just pop off and they're really irritating Fat Boy's buttom and what about that oh that's nicely shaped bit of brass from a a waist belt U that one nice and Broad probably a first world war type but could be still being used in the second world war how he knows these things marveling these small fragments of uniform are a reminder of the troops based here on Shooters hill men such as the Home Guard veterans who've come along to the site today and they've got memories of this suburb bristling with weaponry and there's another pill box here another pill box somewhere here yes including an explosive form of flamethrower a fugas in the front go Garden of the of one of these houses was a fugas ah what here yes can you remember what the flame fugas looked like was it actually inside so it's disguised in a in a mound of Earth or something like that look like garage doors you know where they we had a garage which is is built into the side of your your garden yeah any tanks approaching the order would be would come to set the go set that going that's right right so the Germans have no idea that they're going to walk into a flaming flaming Mass effectively to see more about Jeff and John's experiences of life during wartime you can visit the time Team website I think there'll be a major redeployment of our troops tomorrow to look at other targets such as the mysterious fugas because at the end of day one we've just about finished work on our first sight that's a pretty impressive piece of rubble Phil it's what we wanted Tony what is it it's the Anchor Point of the the balloon the old 1940s ground surface is right down here and what they've done is cut a hole in the ground and literally just filled it up with concrete and then in places they reinforced it with these whacking great bars and now we've got one we know what they look like yeah we can then extrapolate where all the others are and from that we can we can work out where the middle is come on the satellites never where you want them this discovery in Phil's test pit means we can sort out all the stuff on John's ja Fizz just spray my stick yeah and plot the location of our barrage balloon giving us the first element of our picture of wartime Shooters Hill so it would seem to be job done for this park or is it we've got Bronze Age Bronze Age Bronze Age We what have we got this Bronze Age well it's got a h huge bronze Agee ditch and here this mass of heavy stuff that is metal working slag so we have a Bronze Age metal working site maybe even a Bronze Age Hill fort on the top of this hill that's not very common is it to find Bronze Age metal working it's rare as hen's teeth I'm extremely excited except that it's a second world war site what are we going to do now well you I'll have to think scratch my head Tony tomorrow for the moment we're going to concentrate on the Second World War beginning of day two here on Shooters Hill in London where we're investigating the second world war defenses we've got barrage balloons we've got hidden bunkers and this being time team we've got what looks like Bronze Age metal working so what are we going to do move quarter of a mile away and look at something else why have you brought us onto Elum common we've got a spigot mortar have we fantastic oh we have oh yes spig mortar you like this that is good there's a spigot it's funny the things archaeologists get excited about but this metal pivot would have supported an anti-tank mortar and as far as Martin and Francis are concerned it's at the center of a fascinating complex of structures that doesn't sit in isolation cuz actually once you've fired the thing the Germans coming down the road are going to be a bit crossed because you've just whizzed a big bomb at them so what you're going to have out here will be supporting fire trenches so while you're doing that your mates with the Bren guns and the rifles are blazing away as well and hopefully giz are going to find evidence of that as well so what exactly are we going to do here well we're going to open a fairly large trench here because we're going to get the trench that surrounded this thing because you fired it down like that you see if if it's a nice sort of full-on one there'll be lockers for the ammunition actually for the bombs that this thing fires sort of about where Fran is standing I've never seen two grown men so excited by a spigot it's very good I think it's very [Music] nice this Mort site is our third area of Investigation on Shooter's Hill we've already established the position of a barrage balloon in eaglesfield park but we're going to leave a full investigation of the prehistoric archaeology here for another time I'm struck by how it survived for well over 2,000 years and yet we're dealing with some of the fastest dis appearing archaeology in Britain stuff that's not even 70 years old stuff like the mysterious bunker in oxley's wood that one just going straight down H they're not going anywhere they're not sitting anything are they this could be a private air raage shelter but we're keen to find out if it had a more important use as part of London's stopline Central one of the defensive rings around the city designed to thwart a ground invasion by Hitler's troops this is the ball that there's a pill box tacked onto the side of it disguised as an off license that sense and there seems to be evidence of the stopline defenses dotted all along this strategic road if you look on the side there can you see the the change in the paint workor and the vertical it's very distinct isn't it but and then the other crucial thing about where we're standing is that we're right at the crest of the hill so anyone attacking up the hill the axis of the attack is coming towards us from the E and this is just where you put a road to cat vehicles and tanks coming up over the top of the hill as they Skyline over there we've been told about the disguised pillbox at this Pub by Veterans of the Home Guard but it's proving surprisingly difficult to be certain just how many military structures are on the hill there could be a likely Contender across the road from the pub though at the entrance to a hospital great concrete wall or PL yes the rete looks for doesn't it it's that economy concrete the problem we've got is that there's no paper trail for it there's absolutely nothing but it's the perfect position to support the position over at the ball the only way we're going to understand this is is to get all this undergrowth of it and have a good look at it it could just be an aid shelter because it's it's a hospital it needs an aid shelter that would still work right [Music] yeah so this possible pillbox site next to the hospital becomes our fourth area of Investigation but even with my school boy knowledge of the second World War I can't help but wonder if all these defenses were really necessary isn't there something slightly absurd about this notion of German tanks and soldiers marching up Shooters Hill no not at all this is exactly how Germany had conquered most of Europe using Blitz Creek what does that mean it's lightning Warfare where you charge up main lines of communication so quickly so power powerly so abruptly that everybody just Falls away before you but we'd already won the Battle of Britain the skies were ours surely a land-based invasion was a fantasy yeah we know that they didn't at the time and things were still really tough the blitz was going on Britain cities were being bombed also had Hitler's invasion of Russia in the middle of 1941 been the brilliant success that he hoped it would have been then Germany would have ended up with vast quantities of resources from Central and Eastern Europe at its disposal making it possible for Germany to mount a colossal and much more successful invasion of Britain than she could ever have thought of before so the threat of invasion in those dark days was real and imminent but we're also getting evidence in our spigot mortar trench of the daily danger everyone endured from the constant bombing raids is this a piece of shnol um it could well be it's jaggy in all the sort of right way cuz when when the the bomb or the shell goes off those things are red hot and their razor sharp flying through the air and and as they fracture that that's what they look like so we might have got our first piece of proper Battlefield Dey I never thought that it would actually be this big and now I know why lots of people get injured by pieces of shpn that's going to hurt somebody oh that that'll kill you if that hits you it'll kill you you used to collect um bits of shell fragments and things as well TR used to come down like rain yes really our digs now attracted a lot of local interest does anybody know of anything else that we might have missed anybody got anything in their Gardens or in places that we haven't been yet and pointed Us in some new unexpected directions there's a super air raid shelter in our garden and there's a dividing door and Kevin's got the same the other side H so it goes across both Gardens joining door that sounds amazing absolutely we've already investigated one bunker but the sheer size of this new shelter sounds intriguing good grief I thought you were going to show me some measly little Anderson airay shelter but this is enormous and once inside it quickly becomes clear it's unlike anything else we've encountered so far the average Anderson shelter was just a little perun Shack with a couple of bunks this has got it's got electrics no think I've never seen anything like that and look at that you've got whole two rows of Baker light plug sockets you've got light fittings you've got switches there's no way that's a normal airr shelter but for something this size to have that much electric that much lighting that is very very unusual well in that kiss how do you explain it I can't so it is getting pretty loose now forance I think with a bit of a tug we might be able to get out of the ground yeah we go there we go over at our other bunker in the woods we're at last about to get some answers these metal pipes have intrigued us for the last day and a half with Theory is ranging from garden drainage to conduits for military communication cables look at that like it's a spike it's not a pipe so it's a big kind of steak that's been just hammered into the ground isn't it yeah well it I mean it could never have been you know for water or yeah that blows the kind of water service any any kind of service to do with any of these these these buildings here so what what are they doing it for well well I I the first thing that comes to mind is that they maybe it was some kind of retting for all the all the build up here all the mound up against the up against this bunker it can be retting there and there if you had planks running along there and they they would have rotted completely wouldn't they yeah so yeah I think it's a revetment behind yeah that would so we know something about this building's construction but not what it's for and that means we've got four archaeological investigations on the Go including the new one in this sleepy cuer saac this bunker is now officially one of the strangest things we've ever found in a back garden and it's not just because of its size what you got that 3 m that's pretty much of a square space isn't it yeah the amount of 194s electrics in it suggest it may have had some organizational or Communications role we now need to get all the military chaps down here to work out what it was built for and then there's the outside we're confident this Rockery is part of the original bunker construction and that could fit in with the evidence we have of the military disguising important structures why are you pouring over a photo of a florist it's fooled you hasn't it it this is a disguised pill box you're kidding during World War II lots of pill boxes were disguised I got we got Flores got Bookshop a stack I me the reason we're looking at these is that we were trying to get some idea of what the disguises were like yeah it fooled you for about 10 seconds I now realized quite how dared I was surely the Germans wouldn't have been fooled but the point is Tony in that 10 seconds they've killed you it's made you stop and think and while you while you're stopping and thinking that's you're your most vulnerable but once those 10 seconds were over the guys in the pill boxes must have been sitting ducks that's true in 1940 and the expectation in 1940 was that the homeg guard if they had any function at all was to stand in the pill box and shoot straight for as long as they could survive the homeg guard were crucial to the defense of Britain and most of the defenses on the shooters Hill stopline would have been manned by these volunteers drawn from the ranks of the young the old and the reserved occupations come on get it on we got a water fight unfortunately the only volunteers we could must were Matt and Phil these trousers are absolutely enormous I ain't got any bracers I hope my trousers don't fall down I to scare the the enemy do we what do your flies up man do your flies up our view of the hom guard may have been influenced by Dad's Army but the official training manual makes it plain that they had to be prepared to give up everything in the defense of their country including destroying their own homes if it helped slow down the Invaders there's there's a bit in here where it says um you can't retire to anywhere safer that every post has got to be manned uh to the last man and to the last bullet so it's absolutely you know Death Or Glory stuff well they know if you get to this point here and there's been a series of stop lines this is the last one once you're at the top of the hill behind you you're looking down at the capital that's it so the government is prepared to to do things that before the war were unimaginable so using the original 1940 handbook we're going to put time team's own likely Lads through basic training God help us [Music] for the last day and a half we've been scratching our heads puzzling over this thing no one knew what it was was it to do with air defenses land defenses was it a copy of something that was originally made in the first world war well now it's been beautifully excavated do we know what it is Francis I think we do T it's taken quite a while I don't think it was a shelter for I don't know tanks down the hill firing at it I think it was a shelter from stuff coming out of a sky but not bombs I don't think I think something quite else don't you used to yeah it's shrapnel exploding shells up in there raining shrapnel and it doesn't look like it now but you're standing in the grounds of a very large house there were Cottages workshops and so on in here people working in this area and suddenly shells start to exploding above them they want somewhere to get in to get out of that rain of shrapnel where we are now we're about a kilometer away from the heavy anti-aircraft Gun Site those guns were putting four shells in the air at a time and they're firing multiple shells per minute all of those shells are exploding because they're designed to explode at a set height where the bombers are all that Metal's going somewhere and if it doesn't hit a Target it hits the ground the shelter was simply built with cement being poured into improvised wooden molds and we now know that the steel pipes we found were fashioned into stakes and used as part of a revetment for an earth bank that gave Extra Protection come on for anyone caught in in an air raid this simple structure could mean the difference between life and death there you go we can see down here on the wall where there wooden plugs have been inserted in another one there one there so there's a horizontal wooden bench along here so you come inside and then block yourself in here hello four could be minutes could be hours what you've got to remember is every moment you're in here you're terrified out of your life because although this will protect you against the shrapnel coming down it'll protect you against a near Miss because of the last wall at the end of the corridor there what it won't protect you against is a direct hit and that could come at any moment and that will turn this place into a tomb so having decided that this is a civilian shelter we can now concentrate on the stopline defenses on Shooter's Hill and we're beginning to build up a complex picture of how the British would have used this half mile stretch of road to protect the capital it's quite clear that it's a series of overlapping defenses if you lost one bit then you Retreat it to another bit and so on it's like a like a crumple Zone in a in modern car You' have had um pill boxes you have Road Blocks you potentially have uh even Mine Fields along here along this bit up here what I don't understand is you could have put a block across the road and they could have just gone down the side roads well that's partly the intention actually because tanks don't really go well down little cucs and side roads they get blocked off they can't do what they want to do and if you force them around the houses through the woods and trees and so on then they're forced into territory they're not very efficient in in the woods and then you'll be able to machine gun them and so on the whole tactic is to try and block you and force you into these these blockages really suppose the Germans had managed to cross Sho us Hill then they would have been in big trouble they really would if you didn't defend this road coming up onto the hill you basically would have lost London Squad champ keep your eye on what they're doing cuz you'll be doing it in a minute but the troops Manning this strategic route would have been vastly outnumbered by the invading German Army just go through that once more do you think every shot from their anti-tank weapons had to count even if the recoil on the gun was so strong you needed another member of the troop to hold you down C Stone a crows yeah the earth move there God I mean i p a tank or anybody on the receiving end of that there's only one small problem this was developed before the second World War Began by the time the war actually has been fought the Germans have up gunned and up armored their tanks it wouldn't make a hole in it which is why the Home Guard had this thing it's a similar story with this anti-tank mortar which could be mounted on the spigot in the trench where digging on Shooter's Hill or used on these portable legs looking very happy about this no could this thing go off it could do if his finger was on the firing pin and he'd lose your hand it had already been rejected by the regular army as being totally ineffective so it was given to the Home Guard who would have relied on its Mobility to fire off a couple of rounds before retreating to another spigot mortar trench in the area or in Phil and Matt's case simply running away as far as possible that'll probably do now they can't see you but they can't shoot at us from here that's a good point they can't see you you can't see them you're Tak them by surprise oh bu You' got no bombs apart from that it was brilliant God there's more to this than just a lamp of concrete and a spigot isn't there there certainly is Tony I mean I wasn't expecting it to be so well preserved I mean you've got the the the crinkly tin the the corrugated iron revetment around the outside you've got these metal things that held it all in we've even got the floor that the Blok stood on when they were working to spigot water not only have we got the floor that the guys stood on we've got the floor that one of them's dog wandered across because when the concrete was still wet look down there you've got wet in the wet concrete there's poor prince it's total war everyone's involved now we can understand what was happening directly around the get water but out there that's crucial so uh we've just done the GFS haven't we this is over here yeah yeah John brought this down a few minutes ago and that's that's behind us that's the motor pit and you've got these two very obvious anomalies here those are very very high magnetic readings so what John's telling me is he thinks they're more corrugated iron probably revetting two fire trenches so are we going to put a trench in out here you bet Tony absolutely so in the last few minutes of day two we're starting another area of Investigation to discover if these anomalies do belong to support trenches for the spigot [Music] mortar we now have just one day left to piece together all the different defenses on Shooter's Hill as well as come up with an explanation for the mysterious Back Garden bunker but the highlight of Tomorrow has got to be private Harding taking out a German tank on his own on foot and by the way that's the tank who goes there oh God beginning of day three here on Shooters Hill on the outskirts of London where we're looking at the World War II defenses that the British threw up in order to try and prevent a German Blitz C and we found bunkers and something called a spigot mortar and day one here we found a huge barrage balloon tether so we closed all the trenches down and we went somewhere else at least I thought we had but John Francis you're still here go away no Tony I'm rooted to the spot um you remember on day one as well as the barrage balloon we also found that rather interesting prehistoric stuff the IR age stuff so I got John here to do some more geoids just to see where the ditch was going and while he was doing that he extended his his whole area of survey and find something allog together unexpected something else Iron Age no no not at all basically we've got this zigzag trench going through the results and that's right on the far side in the tree there do you think it could be part of the World War II defenses I think it has to be so are we going to put a trench in over there oh yes absolutely so our sixth area of Investigation into the defenses of Shooters Hill will be these possible trenches and if that wasn't enough one of the Home Guard veterans has suggested a location for one of the fiercest weapons in the British Arsenal a flame fugas the makeup of it is a quantity of 40 gallon oil drums yeah which you fill with flammable liquid petrol Benzene uh waste oil anything you can get your hands on and then behind it you place a large explosive charge and then project it towards the enemy so a tank coming at this road is going to go straight into a sheet of flame the thing about you don't just leave petrol lying at the side of the road in petrol cans or anything you've got to disguise it got to hide it and this is the absolute perfect place to do it you've got a bank you can dig and hide the petrol drums in there it was disguised with garage doors so it couldn't be seen it's also alongside the main road yeah where the tanks would be coming up struggling up this hill and so petrols released it will flow down the hill and get other tanks down below it steuarts convinced this site fits perfectly into the unique landscape he's investigating but on the other side of the hill our potential pillbox is looking much less pill boxy although it does seem to have something to do with defense reinforced reinforced big metal bars yeah right so you'd get reinforcement in a roof but you could also have reinforcement if there was something heavy still on top of something you can't tell is a void underneath from that not no well that's useful to know just that alone are you going to do it all you want a second opinion this is just one of the sites we still need to solve on the last day we're a long way underground aren't we well we we we're deep yeah um this is one of two rooms we've got a connecting door but although it feels like we're constantly learning new information about the very recent past one site in particular the back Garden bunker disguised as a Rockery has got the experts flued strange this is too much for an shelter the only reason that you might have a door to next door is if you were thinking about first world war practice with dugouts you always have two entrances gu one's blocked always always this is different to the other sites we're investigating the other defenses are aimed at stopping a German attack but the military guys are beginning to wonder if the garden bunker has got something to do with the most dreaded scenario the successful Nazi occupation of Britain what would have happened if the Germans had been successful what would have happened behind the lined right well there's a whole series of preparations for that we've all heard of the French Resistance there's also the British resistance the auxiliary forces these chaps were going to be hidden in cells little sort of underground bunkers their idea was that they'd be Expendable suicide squads who would have gone out to assassinate German officers knock down Telegraph poles blow up railway lines and they probably only live about two weeks before they were killed if they were lucky is there any evidence of those guys on the ground though it's very scattered around the country because of course it was Deadly Secret so deadly that the men who had recruited these volunteers unbeknownst to them were going to be killed by The Volunteers in case they gave away the names of the volunteers under torture by the Germans but there are installations we possibly got one round here nobody really quite understands it and it may have been linked to this back out on Shooters Hill the archaeology has hit a brick wall or more accurately a bit of prefab wall and and a toilet seat the trench we put in to investigate possible support trenches near the spigot mortar has revealed rubbish pits containing the detritus of prefab homes put up after the war to ease the housing shortage I Neville any sign of a slip trench absolutely not I'm afraid and our new trench trench up near the barrage balloon has been equally disappointing what's causing all the geofiz noise a lot of Iron Works come out of here um things like uh this hinge and it's all fairly recent is it yeah 19th century 19th century that's that is the big problem isn't it with digging recent sites cuz you get all the recent rubbish absolutely but we think we've established what was going on beside the hospital it's not classically like a pill box pillbox shapes tend to be rectangular or hexagonal they're enclosed unit this is more of an l-shape and it it actually feels more to me like a defended gun position than a pill box an anang gun here covers all the way up the road to the brow of the Hill anything coming over there you have got first sight of it you can get a shot at it it's about 150 M that's absolutely ideal for the uh period but should these anti-tank weapons fail there was always One Last Resort Brave volunteers willing to take on a Panza on foot I've got to here tank hunting and destruction 1940 that's all yours the weapons of choice were white phosphorous smoke grenades and lethal sticky bombs replaced here by water filled balloons and the task for our brave boys was simple walk up to a German tank played here by a camouflaged pre-war Austin and destroy it preferably without getting killed arsh out smoke and you throw your smoke bomb your phosphorus bomb from a distance creates a big cloud of smoke then you run in to 15 ft away where you're safe they can't see you and then I'll shout stick you bang your bomb on you then I'll count to four and then five will be bang and you have got to run by the time I've shouted bang you've got to be far enough away otherwise I feel it's probably curtains for both of you all right let's do it good luck smoke oh brilliant brilliant stick one two three four bang oh no we've lost one oh I think he coed it it was a heroic death though but it's more dangerous than I thought you know this exercise with water balloons may seem frankly ludicrous but the aim of the training was deadly serious to prepare the hom guard for a fight to the death and steuarts in no doubt that had Britain been invaded stop Lin such as shootter as Hill would have been turned into places of Carnage I think we've found the location of one of the particularly important parts of the defense mechanism and that's a flaming food gas I mean had they ignited the one at shoots Hill in the position we think one was in it wouldn't have only enveloped a tank in flame it would have said the whole Woodland opposite of fire as well it would been a gigantic explosion but I mean rather than describe it just look at this footage taken at the time wow that's right across a road you wouldn't want to be under the end of that would you it's odd isn't it a lot of what we've done over the last couple of days with Phil has seemed quite funny but actually what we're talking about is ordinary citizens of Shooters Hill trying to kill as many people as possible I'm sure the homeg guard and the people in the Army and the hom guard would rather been home digging their vegetable plots or something but they they knew they had to defend this country they had seen what happened in the low countries they knew what the Germans were capable of they would have defended shoo us Hill to the last man and the last round of ammunition that does look more familiar oh yeah but hasn't it all changed since you saw it last it's great we've finally finished the spigot morar site and Phil now back in civies can cast an expert spigot mortar operator's eye over the finished trench what strikes me about this that we didn't get yesterday yesterday we plunked it down in an open field this is that you get that aspect of the location of the thing is deliberately placed here it's got wonderful Commander field of the road there yep and then presumably if you swing it round yeah you can command a view through there bang you got them that way and not only that even here you're just on the break of slope so you're just slightly hidden so that when you do come under pressure you lift it up and you can leg it yeah I've spent a lot of time looking at the at the pamphlets at the instructions at the theory of all this and what's occurring to me is that it's very very different to how they're supposed to be every photograph that I've looked at while we've been doing this is different and not one of them of any of those photographs has got wrigly tin in like this so it's why dig these things because you look at that think yeah we know what's in there this isn't reminding me a bit of Roman archaeology isn't it you you know that you start in the 19th century and everybody reads up and they say we know what the Romans did and then you start digging and it's different totally it may just be a concrete plinth but it represents the final layer of defense for London's stopline Central a vivid image of a people prepared to fight to protect every inch of their country it's attrition it's bit after bit after bit it's all about defense in depth one line after another line on top of this hill outnumbered and outgunned the outcome of invasion would seem Bleak and yet there's a chance that this system of stop lines would have worked the Royal Military College at Sandhurst did some war games in 1974 in which they simulated what would happen if the Germans landed in Kent they could have got through about 34s of Kent um only to be stopped by a succession of stop lines at the very outskirts of London now they'd have been here for about 3 weeks by which time the Royal Navy would have sailed down from its strong base in new ores and would cut off their supply lines and that would be that they'd be stranded here no petrol no food and we'd have won but the authorities weren't going to take a British victory for granted and our dig here has got one final surprise for us it's a Rockery it is a Rockery AB we were brought here because of the extensive work of local archaeologist Andy Brockman and he now believes that this leafy Suburban Garden could contain one of the rarest examples of second world war archaeology in Britain a Communication Center for the British resistance whatever's going on here it's really really unusual nobody knows about it nobody's admitting to anything about it it's hidden away in Suburbia so you're saying it's secret there's no paper records that we've been able to find yes I'm saying I'm saying yes so what here is this where they coordinating defense or are they coordinating some sort of Black Ops when the Germans actually do come through I think we're pretty sure this says there's some sort of communications function here yeah there's a Communication cable coming this is desk you could put a switchboard or something here or a radio system is extraordinary isn't it because a a program which was really quite sort of objective and measured as soon as you're in here it really becomes quite serious and spooky it's Ser it's also serious archaeology because if this is what it could be then it's nationally important so scary to think of these ordinary parks and roads being turned into a battlefield and when you consider how many more open spaces and strategic roads there are all over the country makes you wonder what else might be out there all of it until recently sadly neglected maybe after the war they just wanted to forget it but I think it's great that so many archaeological groups are now beginning to realize its importance it's also good to know that there's something rather more solid than Matt and Phil to defend us if ever we're threatened [Music] again for more information about this week's dig as well as all the past excavations visit channel for.com Time team and stay with us for the news that's coming up [Music] next

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 280,637

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season, argeologie, archaeological

Id: Z4J-iIrtVoc

Length: 48min 3sec (2883 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2013