Show on mapAfter a little more research and some input from readers i’m now confident these are the remains of a QF decoy site called Greenabella. These sites lit controlled fires during air raids to appear as targets struck by bombs. This location was a civil decoy for Middlesbrough.
A reference in ‘Fields of Deception’ by Colin Dobinson idenifies a generator house and site shelter at this location.
Both have an offset entrance or a blast wall for protection
I think the larger structure with the holes for pipes and a chimney is likely to be the generator building, with the smaller structure the shelter.
Other decoy sites in the area also have unusual structures.
Just wonder if the brine well caverns were being used as a petrol dump with the structures disguised to look like pill boxes, which would mean that they would not get special attention (beyond routine mapping) from German photo reconnisance plane.
The reason I say this , is, up in Hartlepool till the early 90’s, there was a fake bungalow on the side of Brenda Road and by then sited on an active Able UK landfill site. This was a pumping station for defence purposes across the area and purposely disguised from air observation. (I think is it long gone now)
Anyway it’s a starter……..
The bungalow was actually the entrance to an underground system of tunnels which were part of RAF Seaton Snook radar station built in the early 1950’s as part of the MOD ROTOR Plan . Similar bungalows could be found locally at Cold Heselden ; now demolished , Goldsborough ; badly vandalised and burnt out and Shipton which is still extant . The industrial estate at Graythorpe near Hartlepool was the technical support site for the ROTOR station and many of it’s buildings still remain today .The Seaton Snook station was also a WW2 radar station but was entirely above ground and some of those buildings also existed until the 1980’s and possibly later .
I always thought it was a Starfish decoy site – used to lure bombers away from the correct target
David
The ‘bungalow’ on the north east side of Brenda Road had been the entrance to the undergound operations area of RAF Seaton Snook GCI Radar Station – http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/s/seaton_snook/index.html
The accommodation area for the station was situated south west of there at what is now Graythorpe Industrial Estate – http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/309587
please see discussion comments with this image.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/ is the site for info on the Rotor Sites.
Goldsborough was part of a Chain Home Low and later inthe war a Fighter Direction site. It was never completed as a ROTOR site as it caught fire and was burned out while still being constructed. ROTOR was abandoned before it got going as post war jet bombers were proving too fast for the WW2 style control room system.
went down the 1st level donkeys years ago ,it was interesting mooching in some officers down there, the doors had the likes of warrant officer etc .the manways for the cable tunnels had all been lifted up and the copper cable robbed,i mentioned it to a gadgie years later, and he said he was the gadgie who robbed it, happy days