Archaeology Notes

Event ID 830545

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/830545

NT27NW 516 centred 23021 75717

A 'Z' battery of c.60 unrotating fixed projectile rocket launchers (U2P mounts) has been identified on oblique aerial photographs (No.1 CAM oblique, 11771-2, flown 15 April 1943), situated about 100m SE of the roundabout at Crewe Toll roundabout. Visible as rows of small huts with the hutted accommodation camp for the personnel situated to the W. The photographs indicate that the battery is incomplete and still under construction. The Z battery is not visible on a series of vertical air photographs taken duing WW II (RAF NLA 14, 645-660, flown 19 June 1941) suggesting that construction took place sometime between 1942 and April 1943.

The battery was built primarily to protect the newly built Ferranti electronics factory located opposite on the N side of the Ferry Road. Issued number EZ2 by the War Office, the Z battery was to have been armed with 61 UP2 mountings and a GL MkII radar set. The radar GL-mat, if built, would have been located to the immediate S of the rocket launchers. Public Record Office documents (WO 166/11169) from 1943 show that this battery was supplied with 61 U2P type launcher units, a GL Mk II type radar set and was manned by the Home Guard.

The battery was removed at the end of the war and the site is now occupied by offices and part of Telford College.

Information from RCAHMS (DE), February 2002