Cowie Water

The website text produced for Cowie Stop Line webpages on the Forest Heritage Scotland website (www.forestheritagescotland.com).

Introduction: Britain's Second Line of Defence

The Cowie Water Stop line was part of the British World War II defence plan to stop any German invasion onto British soil.

Most of the coastal defences and inland stop lines were built over the course of only a few months in 1940, in response to the German invasion of Norway. This stop line ran west from the town of Stonehaven into the Grampian foothills. It created a bottleneck along the north-east Scottish coast. If an enemy invasion force got past the coastal defences to the north at Aberdeen and Peterhead, they would then have to travel south across the Cowie line. It was a second line of defence.

Over 5 kilometres of the Cowie Water's banks were built up with earth, to create a significant obstacle for enemy military tanks. The tanks could not get over the stream and high banks. It also had about a dozen pillboxes, as well as anti-tank cubes, concrete blocks designed again to block the route of tanks.

Today, you can still see a section of the defences hidden within Fetteresso Forest. In particular, a well-preserved concrete pillbox is located on a small cliff overlooking a bridge over the Cowie Water. The pillbox retains its camouflage of soil and vegetation, placed on top to hide it from enemy planes.

People Story: The bells ran g the arm

On the night of the 7th of September 1940, the church bells sounded in Stonehaven. This was a warning signal to prepare for enemy invasion. However there was no invasion.

The warning codeword, "CROMWELL", had been sent out in the South and East of England. The message was copied to Scotland for their information only. However, part of the Scottish Command appeared to take the warning seriously.

There is little information about the reaction to the false alarm in the war diaries of the military units based around Stonehaven. We know, however, that at least two units jumped into action. These were the 153 Infantry Brigade and the 276 Field Company Royal Engineers.

The 276 Royal Engineer unit's war diary tells us how they went directly to man the demolition of bridges, should it be required.

The Royal Engineers are a section of the British army that deals with all combat engineering and technical matters. These units were largely responsible for organising the construction of the defences, including Cowie Water's stop line.

As was the case on the 7th of September, one of their technical tasks was to demolish bridges so that the enemy could not use them to move across Scotland.