Aughton Spinney

This watchtower is freshly painted, and the site around it is having a new concrete fence built. The site at RAF Barnham was built to assemble and maintain half the UK nuclear weapons in the 1950s, though the greater Barnham site had been in use in the second world war. The nuclear part of its history is given here Link Across the road you can see some railway lines. These originally carried an electrically operated gate, with control supervised from the building to the left. The area is now known as the Gorse Industrial Estate.

For details see TL8579 : Watchtower at former RAF Barnham. My MG ZS180 makes another Geograph appearance.

The small Suffolk village of Barnham has been the home to several military establishments. This was evidently some form of guardhouse or checkpoint (officially a picket apparently) on Station Road, leading to the Little Heath Forward Filling Station. It is opposite Triangle Covert. For more details (a little out of date) Link

RAF Barnham near Thetford, also known as the Barnham Camp, was originally constructed to serve as a bomb dump and during WW2 it had been used for storing chemical weapons such as mustard gas. Part of the site still functions as a satellite unit to nearby RAF Honington. A specialist storage area was constructed in 1954, intended to house Britain's first production nuclear free fall bomb, called "Blue Danube". Each one of these bombs was 7.3 metres long and weighed 10,000 pounds. The site formed part of No. 94 Maintenance Sub Unit which was based at RAF Barnham, with its main purpose (along with its sister site at RAF Faldingworth in Lincolnshire serving the bomber airfields in the north) being to serve the RAF's soon to be formed V-bomber squadrons. RAF Barnham supported No. 3 Group, Bomber Command, and included RAF Wittering, RAF Marham, RAF Cottesmore and RAF Honington. The base also served as a maintenance depot for the weapons and held a stockpile intended to be used in a 'second-strike' scenario. The bombs' fissile cores were kept in 55 small fissile core storage igloos, more commonly referred to as "hutches". RAF Barnham had a total capacity of storing 64 cores (either plutonium or cobalt), kept in stainless steel storage containers. Each of the buildings containing a fissile store safe was secured by a wooden door reinforced by a sheet of steel. An electrical door contact sent a signal to the control room to indicate whether the door was open or closed. There are four distinct areas for storing fissile cores, all located within the danger area. RAF Barnham when active was probably one of the most secure locations in the UK. Access onto the site was via two electric sliding gates, one each at the outer and inner fence, and a split- middle wire gate acting as a vehicle trap for anyone driving in or out, in-between. In addition to the standard outer fence and a picket post at the main gate there was an inner perimeter fence, and within it an inner concrete wall with another picket post. The area between these two fences was classed as "sterile" and patrolled by RAF Police (RAFP) dog handlers. It contained trip wires and flares, placed on the ground as well as on top of the wall, to alert the guard force to intruders. Pole-mounted lighting was positioned at regular intervals. The RAFP station staff manned the five watch towers each with a searchlight on top, believed to have replaced wooden structures in the late 1959/early 1960 and located within the "sterile" zone, on the points of the pentagonal fence. A field telephone was installed at each tower. The buildings in the danger area were grouped around three large and almost identical non-nuclear component stores housing the high-explosive part of the bomb and its outer casing. Two of these stores remain in place today and are currently in industrial use. The area contained within the danger area is now a scheduled monument, containing many listed buildings due to their unique nature and grouping. By the early 1960s the facility had become obsolete and the last nuclear weapons are believed to have been removed by April 1963. In 1965 the site was purchased by Mr Keith Eldred, who still owns it and thanks to whom almost all of the buildings (some now housing businesses on the Gorse Industrial Estate) have survived until today. For much more information go to: Link and Link and Link

- and a Braithwaite water tower in the distance.

Ex military site at RAF Barnham