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Monument details

HER Number:TR 23 NE 31
Type of record:Monument
Name:Great Farthingloe Observation Posts, Dover

Summary

A group of four observation posts with ancillary buildings on the cliff edge. They were designed to observe the Channel for enemy naval targets and provide bearing and co-ordinates for nearby batteries as part of the Fortress System of ranging finding for the Dover Straits.


Grid Reference:TR 29038 39248
Map Sheet:TR23NE
Parish:DOVER, DOVER, KENT

Monument Types

Full description

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A group of four observation posts with ancillary buildings on the cliff edge. They were designed to observe the Channel for enemy naval targets and provide bearing and co-ordinates for nearby batteries as part of the Fortress System of ranging finding for the Dover Straits. The posts optical range and position finders, and radar, wrre linked telegraphically to an underground plotting room and Dover Castle. The radar here played a part in tracking the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen during their dash up the English Channel on 12th February 1942. Light AA defence was provided by Bofors Guns. THe posts, it is understood, went out of use at the end of the war and have been preserved by the National Trust which owns this stretch of the cliffs.(1)


<1> Victor Smith and Andrew Saunders, 2001, Kent's Defence Heritage, KD167 (Unpublished document). SKE6956.

Sources and further reading

Cross-ref. Source description
<1>Unpublished document: Victor Smith and Andrew Saunders. 2001. Kent's Defence Heritage. KD167.