Site record MDR1024 - Site of Second World War Searchlight Battery TL07, North of Over Hide Farm, Hartington Nether Quarter

Former site of Second World War searchlight battery TL07, North of Over Hide Farm, Hartington Nether Quarter, operational in 1941. 'The site of Second World War searchlight battery No. TL07 7 at Biggin. It was manned by 353 Searchlight Battery under the command of 38 Searchlight Regiment. The battery was operational by 17 April 1941. Searchlight sites typically comprised a small ring-ditch to provide the crew with shelter during an air raid, a predictor emplacement for calculating the height and range of targets, a light anti-aircraft machine gun pit, a generator and hutted accommodation for the crew.' (1-2) Three ring banks identified on an aerial photograph, all in the same field with a possible outlier in the next field to the west. Observed by C Hart on 20 April 1977 and identified as World War II anti-aircraft gun emplacements and a brick hut. (3) Google imagery from 2010 shows three ringed enclosures, one in the southeast corner of the small field, and two next to each other roughly in the centre and west side of the field. Between these is the visible remains of a demolished, small, rectangular building. Note that to the southwest are buildings thought to survive from a prisoner of war camp, and the route of the Ashbourne and Buxton part of the London and North West Railway.