Field Visit

Date 5 December 2017

Event ID 1039879

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1039879

Aerial Defences of the Clyde

A control shelter (NS57NE 84) is all that has been observed of this World War Two Civil Starfish Decoy, which is visible on RAF air photographs (106G/ UK 989: 3131-3132, 4246-4247) flown on 9 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 control shelter (NS 60500 76150) is situated in poorly drained ground at the foot of a wooded scarp. It measures 8.9m from N to S by 4.25m transversely over brick walls 0.35m thick and 1.8m high, within a thorn- and grass-grown earthen blast wall up to 2.8m thick and 2m high. The flat, reinforced concrete roof retains a turf capping, while a centrally placed escape hatch is located at its S edge. There is no trace of a baffle shielding the centrally placed entrance on the E, which leads into the heavily silted corridor. Opposed entrances at its W end provide access to two square compartments that are flooded. The control room on the S retains few fittings, but 5 surviving steel rungs attached to the S wall permit egress from the escape hatch. The water level in the generator room on the opposite side of the corridor obscures the plinths, but a large, well-preserved circular aperture high in the N wall emitted the exhausts from the engines that once occupied this space.

The Peathill Wood (NS 599 760) decoy is said to have been situated in what is now waste ground about 575m E of the control shelter (Dobinson 2000, 280), but no traces were observed on the date of visit. This shelter is not associated with the remains on Blairskaith Muir (NS57NE 84), as is intimated in an earlier record. These were linked to the control shelter on Craigmaddie Muir (NS57NE 54).

Visited by HES, Survey and Recording (ATW, GFG, JRS) 5 December 2017.