Chesil in the Second World War

Chesil Beach was an obvious place for an invasion, and in July 1940 the village was fortified against one. Two parallel lines of concrete anti-tank blocks, the dragon's teeth, were laid at Reeds End from the sea across the beach to the Fleet, and pillboxes and gun positions went in along the back of the beach and up towards the Swannery. The Abbotsbury defence area was held by the 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry. Most of the landward blocks and several pillboxes are still there in the reeds and on the bank. One block has a crude shield scratched into the wet concrete by whoever built it. The Fleet was used as a machine gun range and, in 1943, for Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb trials before the Dambusters raid. The Cold War followed. A Royal Observer Corps nuclear monitoring bunker was dug near Abbotsbury Hill in 1959, closed in 1968, and is still mostly intact. The war memorial in the Square carries the names from both wars, and it is where the Garland Day garlands were laid.

See also Previous: Garland Day, 13 May, and how it ran out of childrenNext: The village todayAll chapters