Monument record BNH 054 - Barnham Camp; Gorse Industrial Estate

2nd WW camp and ?munitions store (further research needed) - see 1945/46 AP showing layout of buildings and features.
Cold war military camp buildings and pentagonal enclosed top secret complex with linking tracks and railway sidings etc. Chemical & Nuclear. Not shown on 1958 OS 1:10560 map. Atomic store is a site of national importance. Plans & details in (S2,S3).
Scheduled area now Gorse Industrial Estate.
May 2003: atomic bomb store part of site scheduled. See scheduling information for details on atomic elements (though nothing recorded on 2nd WW use for chemical storage).
Associated mustard gas filling station to S nearby - see BNH 063.
The Bomb Store and servicing facility was one of two built in the mid-1950s, to coincide with the deployment by the RAF of its first operational atomic bomb - provides a good example of first generation nuclear bomb store, retaining evidence for its internal design and handling procedures. Many period features also survive, including watch towers, perimeter fencing, safety rails, lamp-posts, doors and some electrical fittings (S4).
Previously used in 1916 as training camp?
'Exclamation Mark plantation' (Aughton Spinney) still had visible remains of 1st WW use (e.g., a well and foundations of a water tower) during the 2nd WW according to individual stationed there at that time. He has since being attempting to find out its top secret use during the 1st WW without any luck. Though it was described as an ordnance store it has been suggested that it was actually used for the production of mustard gas (note BNH 063 to S). The area was certainly used for the development and training of the tank during the WW1 (again thought to centre on BNH 063) so exact use of the Spinney remains undetermined at present.
Aerial Photos of circa 1945 show Barnham Camp as a complex, including railway sidings, 3 blocks of 4 embanked compounds with associated huts (ammunition/bomb storage areas); an area of linear parallel banks and ditches (believed to have been used for burning off cordite removed from decommissioned armaments); a series of trackways with linear (shell?) stores alongside and a range of buildings at the camp itself (on the east side). Some elements survive.
In 1998, the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) undertook a survey of the atomic bomb stores, Special Storage Site, at former RAF Barnham, Suffolk. This comprised a photographic survey, and a site description based on a field visit and drawings made available by Mr Eldred (Cocroft 1998). The site was also briefly described and illustrated in Cold War Building for nuclear confrontation 1946-1989 (Cocroft and Thomas 2003, 29-34). Later, the site was protected as a Scheduled Monument and a number of its buildings listed. In 2008, Mr Eldred and English Heritage funded a Conservation Management Plan (ACTA Purcell Miller Tritton 2008), which has guided subsequent innovative work to conserve its 1950s steel and reinforced concrete structures. It was in the context of this work that the Operational Record Books of No.94 Maintenance Unit were investigated at the National Archives, Kew. This brief note provides a commentary on the entries in the Operational Record Books, in particular where they are able to clarify the chronology of the site and shed light on the storage of nuclear weapons. Building numbers referred to in this note correspond with those in the original site report (Cocroft 1998).
Forward Ammunition Supply Depot Barnham (S6).

February 2017. 'Brecks from Above' and Breckland National Mapping Programme.
The site of the First and Second World War and Cold War military establishment at Barnham Camp is visible on aerial photographs (S7-S13). The site was used as a temporary camp and training ground during the First World War and then as a major munitions store, including for chemical weapons, and as a filling station for mustard gas bombs in the Second World War. In the 1950s it became a store for atomic bombs, and the pentagonal compound and structures associated with this phase of use are the most prominent survival at the site.

The Cold War components of the site have not been mapped individually, as it was felt that these will be sufficiently recorded by military records and modern map evidence (see S14, for example). It was felt that the evidence on the historic aerial photographs relating to the First and Second World War activity at the site – of which less coherent remains exist – would be better recorded as part of this survey. The recording of individual overlapping military phases is not within the project scope, however this could be considered as a separate project.

It is worth noting that within the perimeter of the camp are several areas of possible earthworks and ‘disturbed’ ground. It is assumed that the majority of these relate to the numerous phases of military activity, training and activity at the site, but there remains a possibility that the some of the earthworks could relate to the pre-20th century use of the heath and the Little Ouse Valley.

Evidence for the First World War use of the site is limited. An undated, but potentially 1920s aerial photograph (S7) shows remains of tracks and the location of former temporary structures within the northern part of the site and around Aughton Spinney. These traces are faint and fragmentary and have not been mapped. Some huts in the eastern part of the site during the 1940s appear to be of First World War date. To the northwest of the Spinney a bunker or defensive position (BNH 113) has possibly been dug into an existing post medieval bank (BNH 053; although this may be a post medieval feature, see record for discussion). A large area of First World War practice trenches is visible as faint traces in the 1940s (S9)-(S10) and 1950s (S11) largely to the west of the Spinney and central plantation belt, and to lesser extent to the east. They make up a system of front line, support and communication trenches and a number of defensive positions. Other First World War trenches may exist within the rough ground, but obscured by vegetation, or within the wooded areas. Fragments of these trenches only show on a relatively small number of the aerial photographs due to the differing levels of vegetation cover and it is suspected that they are more extensive than the brief assessment of the aerial photographs indicates. The identification of them is also made problematic by the presence of earthworks and vegetation marks relating to periglacial ‘patterned ground’ features. Scrutiny of Google Earth imagery would suggest that some elements of these trenches survive as earthworks. Recent aerial photographs show some trenches to southwest of the pentagonal atomic bomb storage facility surviving (S12). A small rifle range to the south of the Spinney may also have originated during the First World War, but continued in use during the Second World War.

The site was used mainly as a munitions storage and production site in the Second World War. Only the main structural elements, railway sidings and access roads of the Second World War site have been mapped to allow for the layout of the site to be ascertained. The majority of individual structures and defences have been omitted from the mapping but are depicted on readily accessible historical sources (S14, for example). The eastern and northern parts of the site consist of a looped network of access roads leading to bomb storage areas. Three main compounds are visible surrounded by blast walls, into which a railway siding approaches form the main line to the southeast. Only the western of these survives on the ground to any extent. A further chain of blast wall protected stores alongside another railway track are located to the east. Numerous pillboxes, gun emplacements and other defences protect the site; key parts of this defensive system have been included in the mapping, in particular the pillboxes, a combination of larger type 23s and type 22. Recent Google Earth imagery (S13) suggests that most of these survive, but obscuring tree and/or vegetation cover has resulted in some uncertainty in a few instances. Some are recorded individually (for example BNH 71-73).

The atomic bomb storage facilities were constructed in 1953 and are first visible on aerial photographs from 1956 (S11). Its layout and surviving structures are still clearly visible on modern Google Earth imagery (S13).
S. Horlock (Norfolk Historic Environment Service), 22nd February 2017.

In the early l950s, the WW2 mustard gas weapons storage depot at Barnham, on the south side of the 94 Maintenance Unit Air Ammunition Park (serving RAF Honington and other airfields), was selected for development as a dedicated storage and maintenance facility for nuclear weapons, in particular for Blue Danube, Britain’s first nuclear bomb.

The 10000lb Blue Danube, was delivered to the Bomber Command Armaments School at RAF Wittering in 1953. It was 24ft 2in long and 5ft 2in in diameter. Blue Danube’s fins extended after dropping so that it could be carried inside the bomb bays of Valiants, Vulcans and Victors.

This huge bomb was, in reality, obsolete before it was delivered which resulted in a limited production run.

Blue Danube was supplemented with US Mk-5 atomic bombs in 1958, pending the introduction of smaller tactical atomic bombs and strategic megaton weapons.

A second similar facility was built at Faldingworth in Lincolnshire. Barnham was completed by 1957 and was able to supply the squadrons at Honnington, Marham, Watton, Wyton, Upwood and Bassingbourn.Barnham came under the control of No. 94 Maintenance Unit and covers 23 acres with a roughly five sided pattern with projecting bastions that allowed the whole of the perimeter to be seen from the internal patrols. Added security was achieved in 1959 by building watch towers at the corners. Inside the perimeter mesh fence which was topped with barbed wire, there was an inner concrete panel wall, also topped with barbed wire. The guardroom and many of the domestic and other buildings were located in a compound between the two wire mesh fences with an electric sliding gate mounted on rails giving access to this area and a second sliding gate into the inner sanctum.

Several new buildings were added a few years after the depot opened, a new maintenance facility close to the entrance gate to the inner compound was added in 1959 and the southern boundary wall was pushed upwards with a second mesh fence erected creating a sterile area where dogs were allowed to run loose.

RAF Barnham closed in the early 1960’s and the site was sold by the MOD in 1966 and it now forms the Gorse Industrial Estate. Most of the original buildings are still extant and are let out to various tenants who put them to a variety of light industrial uses. The inner compound has been densely planted with conifers supplementing the lime and poplar trees which were part of the original tree planting programme; it is now difficult to get an overall view of the layout of the buildings.

The weapon storage area consisted of three different types of buildings, 3 large protected blockhouses for the storage of the non-nuclear components, these being the outer bomb casings and the high explosive parts of the bomb. The three stores were arranged around an internal loop road with grassed earth banks along three sides of each building. At the entrance to each store there is an overall roof supported on concrete pillars with a gantry crane for lifting the heavy Blue Danube bombs from the large delivery trucks. Rooms to either side of the entrance housed ventilation plant for the blockhouse. Each rectangular storage blockhouse was 58 metres x 18 metres divided into 11 bays long by 3 bays wide with two internal lines of supporting concrete pillars.

Two of the three storage buildings are still standing, the third was demolished after it was gutted by a fire in the mid 1980’s; at the time it was being used by a plastic company. The building immediately opposite the entrance gate faces straight onto the internal loop road while those to the west (now demolished) and east were angled with a cranked concrete canopy. The remaining two canopies have had their metal roof sheets removed as they were beginning to rot and the remaining concrete beams have been wrapped in chicken wire. One of the gantries still retains a hoist although it is unclear if this is original or a later replacement. At Faldingworth the three buildings all face straight on to the loop road.

Internally, the buildings have been altered with new walls being built between the supporting pillars creating a number of individual rooms. Each of the two remaining buildings has a number of different tenants.

The fissile cores were stored in 57 small buildings known as ‘hutches’, set within the pentagonal revetted area with blast walls and grassed earth banks. The ‘hutches’ were arranged in five groups between the non-nuclear stores with the buildings linked by walkways to the compound ring road.

These walkways were defined by steel guide rails to prevent people straying onto the grassed area between them.

There were two types of buildings, Type A (of which there were 48) buildings would have held a single plutonium core and Type B buildings would have held two cobalt cores. The hutches are built from rendered concrete blocks with a flat concrete roof. The metal faced wooden doors were fitted with combination locks with additional electrically operated bolts that could be operated from the main control room. The cores were held in stainless steel containers mounted in an aperture in the concrete floor.

Added protection was achieved by surrounding the building with copper earth straps. Each hutch had a sealed intrinsically safe bulkhead light in the ceiling and intrinsically safe electrical switches. Barnham had sufficient storage capacity for 132 fissile cores although it’s likely that only a small number were ever stored there as only 25 Blue Danube bombs were ever built at a cost of £1M per bomb.

All the hutches are still standing as are most of the railed walkways linking them to the loop road; lamp posts are placed at regular intervals along the walkways. All the buildings are derelict and empty and have been stripped of all their electrical fittings. Some of the hutches still have an aperture in the floor where the stainless steel container for the core was located and some still have a black radiation symbol on the door. The concrete panel fence is largely intact although some panels have been removed to give access to the area between this fence and the outer mesh fencing which is also intact.
Of the other building in the inner compound, one was for maintenance and refurbishment. This was located just inside the main gate behind a high concrete blast wall; the Blue Danube required a lot of regular maintenance to keep it ready for use. The building could be entered through two air locks, one located at each end. The building immediately behind housed electrical and ventilation plant and a photographic darkroom. This building is still there as is a storage building in front of it.
Most of the domestic buildings located between the two sliding gates are also still standing although the main administration building and RAF police building has been gutted by fire. All these buildings are of Seco construction, a prefabricated building system consisting of hollow plywood beams and columns. One of the watch towers is located amongst this clutch of buildings and the others still stand at the corners of the pentagon giving a good view along the perimeter fence. The towers are in good condition and can be climbed although the wooden decking at the top is rotting.
Four further buildings are located alongside the access drive and outside the perimeter fence. The first, close to the road, is the outer picket post, this is derelict. Beyond this the MT section and two two stand-by set houses and between them another building that was probably a fuel store.
The remaining part of the WW2 ammunition depot remains an active military training area although all the high explosive magazines have been demolished and replaced by modern buildings of Barnham Camp. The area is still known as RAF Barnham, a dispersed subsidiary of RAF Honnington. The Little Heath forward filling depot (for mustard gas) was located on the south side of Elveden Road. Most of the WW2 buildings are still standing and now house the East of England Tank Museum (S15).