Skegness Magazine

The pillbox is made from concrete and is hexagonal. The door is of conventional size permitting easy access.
Compare the entrance door to those of pillbox 1pillbox 3. The ones on the beach have tiny, angled entrances and interior walls to provide extra protection from breach by the enemy. The easy access to this pillbox suggests that the soldiers were pretty confident that they would not be attacked from behind.
The door is on the west facing aspect of the pillbox, facing away from the direction of the sea and towards the church.

Moving now up to the doorway, we can see that these is no interior wall and we step directly into the main chamber.

It must be noted also that the walls are around 500mm thick compared with the gun placements on the beach which are around 150mm thick.

The roof of the pillbox is re-enforced concrete. The metal (iron) rods are apparent in the photo on the right.

As afore said, this relic is six-sided. One side (west) houses the doorway and the remaining sides all contain firing slits. The slits have been partially bricked up now. Notice that there are no concrete shelves, nor angled gun rests below the windows as in pillboxes 1 and 3

We held the camcorder to record the view as seen through the south easterly slit. Paul Gooch, the narrator in the video reminds us that we must not view this command of fire from a 2006 viewpoint. The trees and shrubs would not have been there during World War 2. This vantage point would have had an excellent command of the fens between Spilsby and the coast sixty years ago, with the added advantage of the greater relief in topography.

The shot right is almost the same panorama as out of the slit above.

Panning left from this panorama, the window from which we took the shot above is to the left of the pillbox.

This is the rear aspect of the pillbox.

Moving inside the structure again, back to the fens and the sea 15 miles away, we take this shot out of the doorway, facing west.

This is the same shot standing outside the doorway. The building on the extreme left is Spilsby church. The white building on the right is the George Public House. Beyond the George, to the right is the centre of the town.

There were many styles of pillboxes in operation during World War 2.
Some locations were more vulnerable to attack than others, and by different methods. It seems that each location had its own type of pillbox depending on the anticipated mode of attack.

Skegness Video
8 min 24 sec – Jan 30, 2006

World War Relics Trail Top Level Page