Monument record ADB 156 - A row of possible early World War II anti-invasion defences.

A row of what are possibly posts or poles, and probably early World War II anti-invasion defences are visible as structures on aerial photographs at Aldeburgh. The posts are not all visible on a single set of photographs, making positive dating and a sequence of construction somewhat difficult, but it is possible to be fairly confident that all the structures identified are part of the same defensive feature. They can first be seen in the breakwaters on photographs from August 1940 (S1). However, only two photographs are available from this run, covering a circa 1km area from the south east of Aldeburgh at circa TM46505599 to circa TM46345490, to the east of Martello tower CC. To the north of this area the features are only intermittently visible for about 1.2km, from circa TM46515613 to circa TM46705736, on photographs from December 1941 (S2). However, this is probably due to the high tide at the time of photography, rather than the absence of the features. The features are visible contemporaneously with the beach scaffolding in 1941, 1943 and possibly visible on photographs from 1945 (S3 - S4). It is likely that they were 'dragons teeth', metal poles protruding from the top of concrete obstacles designed to tear the treads of tanks and similar armoured vehicles (S5). In total, the visible features extend over circa 2.5 km of sea-front, but it is likely that they extended much further than this along the coast during the war.