What a shame that a good program was ruined by poor knowledge.
I had to be sedated when Francis Pryor said that the pintle of the Spigot Mortar was the spigot! For heavens sake, such a respected archaeologist making an elementary mistake like that.
Most of the show was acceptable to good, but so many minor errors were an irritation.
The so-called shrapnel shelter has to be wrong, though I have never seen anything quite like it so I cannot tell. The flanged pins used as revetment retainers are defiantly wrong, why use something like that when you could use a simple angle iron.
All in all, I give the program a disappointing six out of ten.
Could do better Time Team

John Hellis
Co-ordinator, Pillbox Study Group

Don't be quite so dismissive! There's always the possibility that, in constructing something rapidly, they used whatever was to hand. If this was something built for a private estate (which was what was implied)it isn't likely to have been built to any 'master plan'.

Also what they said was shrapnel, may have been
part of a bomb casing ?.
Shrapnel is usually a lot thinner, and made of
brass.

Hi Lewf, air raid shelters were built to many designs, but there are ‘rules’ that all designs follow, one of these is that the entrance is as small as possible to minimise the effects of nearby blast. The entrance to this bunker was the full width and height of the structure. It reminds me of the structures found on the Atlantic Wall in France and Belgium. They were designed to shelter searchlights and anti-tank guns. I think that this bunker was designed to protect an A/T gun. The wall in front of the entrance may have been added later when the bunker had a change of use to, probably, some sort of store building. Maybe to store gas cylinders for the barrage balloons.

I'll check my recording but I'm sure Francis said it was for a spigot mortar and even saying "it's a spigot mortar" when it was clearly only the mount for same is a typical bit of archaeologists' shorthand. How many times have we seen them unearth a tiny pot shard and announce "it's a mortarium" os some such?

As for the flanged pins you have to remember it was wartime and people used whatever was to hand . I think it would be dangerous to read too much into their presence.

I think that this bunker was designed to protect an A/T gun.

Any such gun emplacements usually take the form of an arc round the gun's field of fire, this formed a right angle, besides there were standard design concrete emplacements for the 2 pdr and 6 pdr A/T guns and this didn't look like any of them. I would've also expected it to be solid, not hollow with benches fitted.

Sorry, I did not explain myself clearly, I meant that it may be a gun shelter not a gun emplacement. The gun shelter allows the gun to be protected from bombing but the weapon would be bought out from the shelter into an open emplacement to ready it for firing.

Members of the Pillbox Study Group ( http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/) have discovered the probable purpose of the so-called shrapnel shelter. (See the group Forum)
It seems that there was a Rocket Battery in the area, possibly to protect an AA battery also on the hill. UP (Rocket) batteries had open-ended concrete shelters in which to store the rockets. I am assuming that the rocket battery in question was a single launcher, which would have had one shelter to accompany it.

It wouldn't have held very many.

Do you know how long these were, I mean the 3" version? I've a diagram somewhere but can't find it. That would be a useful clue.

I am not sure how large or small they were but batteries often used a structure similar to an Anderson shelter with either one end or no ends. This structure is much larger than that.
Time in Action for a rocket battery was very short so they did not need much in the way of Ready Use ammunition.

True but they did try to compensate for the system's inaccuracy by firing off large numbers at the same time.

The batterys on the Hill covered several acres
I dont know if that was large or small.The one on Woolwich Common was larger and Blackheath
as I remember was the biggest of the lot.
And locally it was said that all 3 were controlled from Shooters Hill because of the view they had of approaching aircraft

Shooters Hill Z-Battery Update: According to Len Whittaker's 'Stand Down', p.102, the battery was 145 (105th County of London) Home Guard 'Z' Rocket Anti-Aircraft Battery, commanded by Major J.G. Madden DSO.

Interestingly, it appears that it did not become operational until 23rd July 1944, which was very late. Several people have said that they thought the site was a regular Heavy AA gun battery, not a z-battery. It could have been both. In mid June 1944, all London's AA guns were moved down to the coast to fight the new V1 menace. This z-battery could have replaced the guns at the site.

As AA guns were no longer allowed to fire at V1s over London in case they brought them down onto residential areas, and there were no further manned Luftwaffe raids on London after this date, it would suggest that this z-battery was never used in anger.

Unless there were many false alarms at night The rocket guns most certainly were fired in anger the noise was deafening.It would be interesting if you could dig up some gen on the site on woolwich common and blackheath.we also had mobile AA guns in the area.I would be surprised if the AA guns etc were removed from the Shooters Hill /Woolwich Area because of the Arsenal The RA Barracks and most importantly The Docks.We certainly had Lulls and there was one between the V1 and V2 periods.We were lucky my father took us to Chievely in Berks during really bad periods and we would come back during a "Lull"