Reader helps solve mystery on the hill
Thursday 26th March 2009, 12:33AM GMT.
Maybe it’s because it was clearly Top Secret that only one reader has come forward to tell us more about a mysterious wartime structure at the top of Nedge Hill, Stirchley.
We featured the structure, a brick building with a wooden roof which had collapsed inwards, in our weekend Picture Detectives slot. The photo was taken 10 years ago and we are not sure if it’s still there today.
In the past it has been suggested to us that it was an “RAF fixer station”. We appealed for further information, and that led to Mrs Joan Forrester, of Wellington, giving us a call.
“I can’t give you much information about it, but there was a station up at the top of the Nedge which was a radar station, I think. The RAF were up there at one time and one of the chaps was billeted with us at Stirchley Grange,” she said.
“He could not ever say anything much about it. But that was where he went every morning. His surname was Rabjohn – I can’t remember his first name – and he came from Bristol.
“His wife lived with us as well, and then he was moved. I think he was sent abroad.”
Mrs Forrester, whose name at the time was Joan Phillips, said: “It was during the war, in about 1942 to 1943.” She never went to see the structure at the time.
“I don’t think you were allowed. There was a great big water reservoir that the Home Guard guarded at the top of the Nedge – my brother was in the Home Guard,” she added.
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There is a similar structure to this visible on the trainline between Shrewsbury and Wellington. It is situated on the left hand side of a Wellington bound train in a small woodland area just before what i think is the River Tern.
I’ve always wondered what it is… looks like some kind of pillbox.
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I posted some pics of this on some websites a couple of years ago and was informed that this was indeed a fixer station designed to guide planes onto a nearby airfield (nr the Wyke?). Not sure if the structure is still following the development up there. The associated buildings nearer the road appear to have been demolished.
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