On the outskirts of Hungerford in West Berkshire there are two pill boxes which unusually are to be found side by side<\/p>\n
They are adjacent to the railway line that runs between London and the West Country and both overlook the Kennet and Avon Canal<\/p>\n
Today they are crumbling a little but are an integral part of the rural landscape on the edge of the common<\/p>\n
But it was not always like this as these pill boxes will constructed with a specific purpose in mind<\/p>\n
That was to counter the threat of invasion from the Nazi\u2019s which for a period early in the war was expected at any time<\/p>\n
It had been decreed that the canal would be used as a line of defence should an invasion have taken place<\/p>\n
The guns mounted in these two boxes had clear and precise orders<\/p>\n
These were to destroy two local bridges in a effort to hinder the invasion<\/p>\n
The ancient canal bridges in Hungerford and at Mill Lock were the chosen targets<\/p>\n
Happily the invasion did not take place for as well as losing the bridges the whole of Hungerford would have been laid to waste<\/p>\n
Today I travelled along the canal in a leisurely fashion observing both the creatures and the life of the canal at close quarters<\/p>\n
The trees above the boat moved with little effort in the breeze and every so often a silent train passed by without much fuss<\/p>\n
I thought about the bridges so thankfully spared and the peace that had returned without disturbance<\/p>\n
On the table in front of me lay a book of poems by Andrew Marvell which had been a gift from my wife<\/p>\n
I had not had occasion to read any of his poems during our voyage<\/p>\n
As my thoughts had been elsewhere for much of the day<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0Hungerford Sunday August 18th 2019<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the outskirts of Hungerford in West Berkshire there are two pill boxes which unusually are to be found side by side They are adjacent to the railway line that runs between London and the West Country and both overlook the Kennet and Avon Canal Today they are crumbling a little but are an integral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}