The military history which lay dormant in a rural corner of Norfolk is being unearthed in a new publication.
A map from Bovington Tank Museum showing 20th century tank tracks near Thetford overlaid onto a Goole Earth map of the area. (Image: Archant)
The Brecks Military History project examined the district's pivotal role in military action during the world wars – from the first tank training bases to decoy airfields.
Run by the Breckland Society as part of the HLF-funded Breaking New Ground Brecks Landscape Partnership, the project has
culminated in a new publication about the area's part in 20th century warfare.
The 48-page illustrated report will be released in time for Armistice Day (November 11).
Breaking New Ground has run a project to publish a book on the military history of the Brecks. (Image: Norfolk Record Office ACC2003/115)
The investigation was led by Peter Goulding, a former millwright who now manages HLF-funded historical projects.
Mr Goulding said: 'I recruited some volunteers, we did some archaeological field work and went to the records office to look at archival research.
'There is quite a lot of stuff that has been published, and just for the Breckland area we found some really important documents.'
Among their finds were the history of an airfield at Snarehill, near Thetford, which was used as a training base – and the home of an anti-zeppelin squadron – in the First World War and a decoy base to distract enemy aircraft in the Second World War.
The base, on land now belonging to the Shadwell Estate, had dummy shelters and a control tower on it from its time as a decoy which Mr Goulding says are still in good condition.
There was information about the Desert Rats' camp at High Ash, used by the squadron in 1943 – the only place it was ever based in the UK. Using data from BNG's LiDAR survey, volunteers were able to map out former locations of Nissen huts at the camp.
The team also had access to historical material relating to Stanta, established as a mock battle ground in 1942.
The project used data from Breaking New Ground's LiDAR surveys to assess the landscape beneath the trees and identify possible former military sites.
The data was compared to existing maps from the Bovington Tank Museum and Imperial War Museum and used to locate the first locations of tank training bases in the Brecks, including one in Elveden.
Code-named Elveden Explosives Area, it was a crucial site in the development of the weapon in 1916.
Mr Goulding said: 'Archaeologically this is very significant.
'We had a map of the tank trenches and with the LiDAR we found a ghostly zig-zag of the trenches. It is really distinctive – they were four feet wide and only a few inches deep. To pick that out with just fieldwork would have been virtually impossible.'
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