Everything tagged: 2 Loophole

The wartime map shows Pillbox 14 here.

Walking along Mills & Chung path I thought I could see a pillbox in the distance.

I think we can see a pillbox towards the eastern end of the beach in this Hedda Morrison Photo:

The wartime map shows it at the southern end of South Bay. I took a look, but couldn't see any sign of it.

At the northern end of the beach was this concrete block that looked about the right size:

[2022 Updated with corrections from Rob]

This photo by Harrison Forman gives a clear view of the pillbox.

UWM's Harrison Forman collection has several photos of this area and the pillbox in 1941 (see below).

Interesting to see there was a gas station on the junction even then, and apparently under the same management. In 1941 the station sign says 'Texaco', and today's station is the ground floor of a building named Caltex House, Texaco being an ancestor of the Caltex brand.

Some points for discussion:

1. Direction.

As usual, the pillbox was built on the old shoreline. In this case, the shore of Kellett Bay.

The bay has been reclaimed, and is now the site of the Wah Kwai Housing Estate. The estate took its first residents in 1990, so the reclamation will have been before then.

I took a walk around the back of the estate, but there is no sign of the pillbox. The hillside slopes have been cut back as part of building the estate, so I guess the pillbox was demolished at that time.

If you are looking from the beach out to sea, this pillbox is at the back of the beach on your left.

As you walk towards it you'll see it has a metal door in good condition (not the original). I guess it is used as a store room for the people working at the beach.

I was expecting the pillboxes around Aberdeen to have been demolished already, so I was very pleased to get this email from Thomas:

I think I have bumped into one of these in March and didn't realise it.  Here is an old photo of the location.

Now the location is boarded up for slope maintenance.

The wartime map shows this pillbox on the shoreline.

The pillbox is mentioned several times in documents related to the Telegraph Bay redevelopment, which was later named Cyberport. First there is the 'Final EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Report for Agreement No CE 92/97' which says:

The wartime map shows this pillbox was on the shoreline, before Telegraph Bay was reclaimed and became the Cyberport development.

I don't know if there are any traces of the pillbox remaining? I thought I had seen a photo on the internet recently, with a comment that it was soon to disappear. But this report before the cyberport development started suggests it may have been left untouched: