Monument record SUE 133 - Second World War military training activity within Orford Battle Training Area

December 2015. Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty National Mapping Programme.
Evidence of Second World War military training activity is evident as earthworks, structures and areas of disturbed ground (most since levelled or destroyed) on aerial photographs (S1)-(S6), across much of Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 quarter sheet TM45SW and its immediate environs. The training area forms part of the Orford Battle Training Area (SHER ORF 137), which was primarily used for tank training. The activity is extremely extensive, and comprises dispersed areas of intensive activity (structures, groups of pits or craters, anti-tank obstacles, for example), linked by networks of vehicle tracks. The site has been mapped principally by extent, although this reflects the limits of the project area as well as the activity itself. Areas under woodland cover seem to have been largely avoided, although this may also reflect the invisibility from the air of activity under woodland cover, and the tracks between plantation boundaries do seem to have been used. A representative sample of the most visible and substantial features has been mapped in detail; sites exhibiting unusual features, a formal layout or evidence of a specific function have been recorded individually. The training area encompasses the village of Sudbourne; one flat-roofed probable Second World War structure has been mapped here (at TM 4137 5293), but it is likely that other military buildings existed but are not readily distinguishable from civilian buildings using aerial photographic evidence alone. (The village was evacuated and some of the houses used for accommodation, S7.) Some of the circular pits may be bomb craters; where this is likely to be the case, the craters have been recorded separately.
S. Tremlett (Norfolk Historic Environment Service), 9th December 2015.