Field Visit

Date 3 October 2017

Event ID 1039866

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1039866

Aerial Defences of the Clyde

A control shelter (NS45NE 59) and an adjacent building platform are all that has been observed of this World War Two Civil Starfish Decoy, which is visible on RAF air photographs (106G/UK1025: 4312 and 4313) flown on 26 November 1945. The site is one of 18 decoys that were constructed as part of the military infrastructure designed to protect the industries in the centre of Glasgow and along the banks of the River Clyde from aerial attack.

The partly demolished control shelter (NS 54140 51852) is situated on a natural rise in a field of improved pasture about 150m S of a Gas Distribution Station. A collapsed entrance facing W stands 1m high, but what remains of the interior is filled with rubble. The debris indicates that it was a brick-built structure with a flat concrete roof and surrounded by a grass-grown earthen blast wall. There was an escape hatch in the middle of one edge of the roof and the interior consisted of a single compartment. A concrete building platform (perhaps for a generator) is situated 14m WSW of the shelter. It measures 5.5m from NW to SE by 4.8m transversely and there was a threshold on the NW.

No traces of the decoy were observed in the semi-improved pasture about 550m NW of the control shelter, but the two long concrete ‘blocks’ (NS 54056 52378) noted by the Hunters (MS 1589, 54, Feature 35) were plainly constituent platforms. These are clearly visible under the turf in recent aerial photographs (Getmapping vertical air photograph 5452, 14 March 2018). In addition, a concrete block with vertical bolts at each corner (NS 54358 52238), situated on the N verge of the Bonnyton Moor Road, possibly supported a fire basket or a tank. It measures 2m from E to W by 0.8m and is locally interpreted as a mounting for a searchlight.

Visited by HES, Survey and Recording (ATW, JRS) 3 October 2017