TWENTIETH CENTURY DEFENCE SITES of TYNE and WEAR

Section 3 The Second World War
Seaburn (HER 1834, 1854, 1856, 1857,
4667, 5364)
Souter Point (HER 5350)
South Bents (HER 5354)
South Hylton (HER 5422)
South Shields (HER 5383, 5362, 1845,
1843)
Southwick (HER 4665, 4666)
Springwell (HER 5397)
Sunderland (HER 1783, 5426, 5335, 5413 -
5417)
Team Valley (HER 1778)
Trow Point (HER 1792)
Trow Rock (HER 5356)
Tunstall (HER 5370, 5424)
Tynemouth (HER 4671)
Usworth (HER 5400, 5399, 5401, 5404 -
5406)
Trow Rock
Walker (HER 1787)
Wallsend (HER 5336, 5341, 5340, 5342,
1830)
Warden Law (HER 1782)
Washington (HER 5388, 5398, 5392 - 5396,
5348)
West Boldon (HER 5425, 1784)
West Denton (HER 5368)
West Herrington (HER 1779)
Whitburn (HER 5355, 1794, 1833, 4668,
5351 - 5353, 5427)
Whitley Bay (HER 5345, 1790, 1831, 4669,
5346, 5358)
Wickerwack (HER 4663)
Woolsington (HER 4924, 5430)
50
Spigot Mortar
Emplacements
29mm Spigot Mortars, also known as
“Blacker Bombards”, only started to be
introduced into defensive planning in the
summer of 1941. Before this time, antiinvasion
measures had been based around
static lines of pillboxes. Even as early as
1941 many had questioned the utility of such
inflexible defences. In February 1942 Home
Forces declared that recent experience
‘points most strongly to the fact that the
pillbox is not a suitable type of fortification for
either coastal or nodal point defence’. The
new defensive arrangement focused much
more on earthworks and more flexible
defences than on conventional fortifications.
The Spigot Mortar fitted into this system
perfectly. These mortars were very simple
devices, and were issued to the Home Guard
to use against enemy vehicles. They were
set up in 4ft deep dug-outs, with a ‘pedestal
mounting’ - a large concrete pillar with a steel
pin in the top, to which the mortar could be
attached. Each mortar would be issued with
four kits for making emplacements, meaning
that four alternate positions could be
provided for each weapon, giving much more
flexibility of deployment than under previous
defence arrangements. These mortars were
given priority in coastal regions, but were
also often placed near bridges and road
junctions, and wherever an ambush would be
most effective. Only two Spigot Mortar sites
are known in Tyne and Wear, one in Whitley
Bay (HER 5419) and another in Earsdon
(HER 5420), but there would have been
many more than this originally. 5790 mortars
were issued to Northern Command (which
controlled the east side of England between
the Wash and the Scottish borders) and, as
each would have been provided with kits for
four emplacements, there would have been a
theoretical maximum of 23160 mortar sites in
Northern Command alone (Lowry 1996 88-
91 and Ripley and Pears 1994-2006)