This will be a quick one. There's a lot of smaller stuff dotted around that hasn't escaped my notice, but has escaped my immediate attention while I typically favour larger adventures. But I have been making a point of trying to get around to these smaller places, and that has brought me to this delightful pillbox, situated somewhere north of Telford.
For those of you who don't know, pillboxes are defence structures built in 1940 and 1941 as a precaution for possible enemy invasion. The idea was that people could fire at the enemy through the holes in the walls, from relative safety.
Most
of them are at strategic points or outside military bases, which makes
this one seemingly an anomaly in that it's plonked in the middle of
nowhere, between a field and a country road.
But
it's actually guarding a bridge. Bridges were points of
interest because in the event of a land invasion, rivers and canals
would make natural barriers and fallback points. So bridges were
protected. Granted this ones easily overlooked because today the "natural barrier" in question looks more like a trip hazard than an obstacle.
But if we look at old maps, we can see that this was once Edgmond Wharf, and part of the Shropshire Union Canal. It's now a shadow of itself, but in 1940 those pesky Nazis would definitely be taking the bridge, and probably getting gunned down from this pillbox.
But it's all hypothetical. As the war chugged on, it became less and less likely that the Nazis would invade the UK (If they had, we probably would have let them keep Telford, let's be honest) and consequently pillboxes were never actually used, except maybe by kids looking for a place to piss, shag or smoke. But this one being so rural, it hasn't even had that! There's a bit of graffiti but that's it.
I do have a soft spot for pillboxes, but I have to be honest, they
aren't visually exciting. There's a door, and then it's just a quick
stroll around a hexagonal box looking out through various windows. I can totally
understand why these aren't everyone's cup of tea.
But for me, these represent a visual reminder that there was a time when our safe little island of miserable tea drinkers actually had to contend with the possibility that we might be invaded by a foreign nation. In the UK, we really only hear about it happening to other people. We've never lived it.
Unless you're Celtic and about a thousand years old, but that's another story.
From a patriotic standpoint, we can look at this as a symbol of just how
prepared we were. We overcompensated big time, and the UK is covered in remnants of that effort. Better to have a pillbox
and not need it, than be shot by a Nazi while out walking the dog along the canal.
But there's something about this that gets my imagination racing. It's a hypothetical scenario. It leads us to wonder just what would have happened if we had been invaded, and it's quite a scary thought when we can imagine these familiar, peaceful places being literal battlegrounds.
And that's why I love them.
So that's all I've got. I said it was a quick one! There's minimal vandalism and graffiti in this pillbox so if you are a war nerd, it might well be worth a quick mooch. If you want something more exciting, then I've recently done some cool things on my travel blog.
I've also recently been interviewed by BBC Radio Shropshire, so by all means give that a listen too.
I would like to promise more exciting blogs on the horizon, but I feel that such a statement is unfair on the little pillbox, because I do like it, and sometimes it's nice to write something short and sweet. What I can promise you is more Telford in the future. The Nazis didn't invade, but I did.
In the meantime, feel free to follow my social media accounts to stay updated on the blog. I'm on the main shit ones- Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, its deformed twin Threads, and the various attempts to make social media better, Vero and Blue Sky.
Thanks for reading!