TWENTIETH CENTURY DEFENCE SITES of TYNE and WEAR

Section 3 The Second World War
which could be used against either ships or
aircraft. Three 5.25 inch guns were
accordingly mounted at South Shields in July
1943, but by December of the same year it
had been decided to abandon the dual role
plan altogether. By this point, Park Battery
was the only site in the country to have been
fully converted, making it a unique site in the
history of Britain’s Second World War
defences. The battery remained in use for
some time after the peace of 1945, although
in 1951 its dual role ceased, and control was
given over entirely to Anti-Aircraft Command.
Five years later, the guns and their
mountings were removed, and the site was
returned to the South Shields Corporation.
Landscaping of the area means that nothing
remains of the battery above ground.
However, the layout of the site and
emplacements can occasionally be seen
from the air as parch marks in the grass
(Clarke and Rudd 1988 and 1989 and Foster
2004).
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21 Barron’s Battery (HER 85)
To improve the defence of the Wear, an
emergency battery was added at the mouth
of the river in August 1940. Two 12 pounder
Quick Firing guns were emplaced, one on
the north pier, the other on the south.
Searchlights were added later in the same
year. This dispersed set-up made command
of the battery very difficult, as a detour
through Sunderland was necessary to get
from one gun to the other. The battery was
praised in a 1941 inspection report, although
the emplacements lacked a command post
or overhead covers (most batteries had
these during World War Two due to the
increased threat of aerial attack). The site
was placed in care and maintenance in April
1944 before being completely abandoned by
the end of the year (Clarke and Rudd 1988
and 1989).
24
Anti-Aircraft defences
(Fig 2)
Command Centres
The reorganisation of Britain’s air defences
between 1937 and 1940 was known as the
‘Dowding System’ (after Sir Hugh Dowding,
the chief of Fighter Command). This was the
first truly integrated air defence system,
which used information from radar stations,
the Royal Observer Corps and other sources
to control the response from anti-aircraft
batteries and sector airfields. The country
was divided into four control groups, each
with an operations room supported by a filter
room to prevent operations rooms being
swamped by information. Filter rooms
received reports on enemy raids and
reconciled any conflicting details before
passing them on to the operations room,
from where the defences would be
controlled. When the Dowding system
began, every radar report in the country was
sent to a central filter room at HQ Fighter
command in Stanmore. The reports were
then passed down to the relevant Group
Operations Room. In the case of 13 Group in
Northern England and Scotland, this was
Kenton Bar bunker. However, by the end of
the Battle of Britain, the filter room at
Stanmore was so overloaded with
information that it was decided in December
1940 to create separate filter rooms for each
of the Group Operations Rooms (Lowry
1996).
22 Jesmond, Royal Grammar
School, Regional War Room
The Regional War Room of the Regional
Commissioner was located at the Royal
Grammar School. Staff and pupils had been
evacuated to Penrith (Ripley and Pears
1994-2000, D1858). The location of the first
bombs to fall in a district was always
reported to Region, who then reported to