1900s-1945
The summer of 1940 was a moment of genuine peril for Britain, and the quiet fields around Leigh carry the physical evidence of how close the invasion threat was felt to be. When German armoured divisions poured into France on 10 May 1940, they did so by way of the Low Countries, sweeping around the northern end of the Maginot Line. That great chain of French fortifications had been built to shield the border with Germany, but it offered no protection against an attack coming from the north, and the German advance proved devastatingly fast.
Within weeks the British Expeditionary Force found itself pinned against the coast at Dunkirk. The rescue operation known as Dynamo, completed by 4 June 1940, brought away some 340,000 soldiers, a remarkable achievement that saved the army but little else. Nearly all the weapons, guns and vehicles the men had taken to France had to be left behind on the beaches and in the surrounding countryside. Britain was left with fewer than 1,000 field guns with which to defend itself, and the prospect of a German landing on home soil had to be taken seriously.
The task of organising the country's land defences fell to General Ironside. His scheme had two strands. Along the south and east coasts he established what were called coastal crust defences, intended to resist an enemy in the first hours of a landing. Behind them he laid out a long anti-tank line, beginning at Newhaven on the south coast. From there the line followed the rivers Ouse and Medway inland, turning north at Maidstone and running by way of Chatham across the Hoo peninsula to the Thames estuary. It then continued northeast through Chelmsford and Cambridge until it reached the Wash, with the ultimate plan being to carry it all the way to the Firth of Forth. The expectation was that any German landing would come between Eastbourne and Dover, which is why so much effort was concentrated on Kent and Sussex.
A second line was laid out further west, starting at Bristol and passing south of London. This one made use of the rivers Mole, Eden and Medway, and it joined the Newhaven-to-Hoo line at Penshurst. For Leigh the significance is obvious: the river Medway flows through the southern part of the parish, so the village found itself sitting directly on one of the country's principal defensive lines.
Construction followed quickly. In late May 1940 the War Office issued seven standardised designs for pillboxes, so that local builders could put up defences to a common pattern without delay. On 25 June 1940 the army carried out a survey of the land, and sites were chosen along the north bank of the Medway. The most common structure in our area was the type 24, a shellproof hexagonal box intended for infantry armed with light machine guns. Inside, a Y-shaped wall was built to limit the ricochet of bullets around the chamber. The loopholes themselves were precast at the railway yards at Ashford and then transported to site.
Two heavier structures stand out locally. A type 28 gunbox watches over the railway crossing of the Medway; it was designed to house a Hotchkiss 6-pounder gun. At Ensfield Bridge the defence was a type 28A, a variant with an attached infantry chamber, and the bridge was also covered by an unprotected 6-pounder mounting. The railway itself was intended to serve as a second stop line, allowing troops to be moved and defended along its course. In support of these fixed defences, the 5th Royal Artillery Medium Regiment manned 47 guns in the area.
The strategic picture changed within weeks. On 19 August 1940 General Brooke replaced General Ironside as Commander-in-Chief, and he took a different view of the southeast's defences, halting all further work on the anti-tank lines there. Even so, 24 guns were kept in the Tonbridge and Maidment area — Tonbridge and Maidstone, that is — and by late November all the 6-pounder guns had been transferred elsewhere. The building programme had been astonishingly rapid: 1,448 pill and gun boxes went up in just two months. On the Newhaven-Hoo line alone, 187 were constructed.
Many were demolished after the war, but the survivors are striking. Of the 187 on the Newhaven-Hoo line, 140 still stand, and no fewer than 18 survive within Leigh parish. They are a lasting reminder of that anxious summer. Readers who wish to learn more will find C Alexander's book Ironside's Line, published by H.M.P. in 1999, an excellent guide. This article draws on a piece by Sue Featherstone that appeared in the Parish Magazine in July 2002.