What is a pillbox (second world war)?

What a pillbox (second world war) is

About 28,000 pillboxes and other hardened field defences were built in Britain in 1940 and early 1941, and about a quarter are thought to survive. Most follow standard designs issued in 1940 by the War Office branch known as FW3, such as the hexagonal Type 22 and Type 24, and were built of reinforced concrete, often with brick or timber shuttering. Many were sited along the coast and along stop lines, chains of defences inland such as the GHQ Line and the Taunton Stop Line. The word pillbox first appeared in print in 1917, for concrete shelters on the Western Front.

How pillbox (second world war)s look on LiDAR

Pillboxes are small structures, usually only a few metres across, and the filtering that produces a bare-earth model often removes them as buildings, leaving a flat or slightly disturbed patch. Pillboxes set into banks or covered with earth may show as small, steep-sided mounds, and associated anti-tank ditches, trenches and gun positions may survive as earthworks nearby. A first-return surface model or aerial imagery shows standing pillboxes more reliably than any bare-earth visualisation, and on the terrain model a local relief model is the best view of the associated earthworks.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

On the terrain model, an earth-covered pillbox can look like a small barrow or spoil heap, and the site of a demolished pillbox like a small quarry or building platform. On surface models, anti-tank blocks, gun emplacements and small farm buildings look similar.

Protection

Some pillboxes are listed buildings or scheduled monuments, but most have no statutory protection.

Examples on the LiDAR

Where they are

Counties with the most pillbox (second world war)s that have a page here.

More examples