Work in progress

Victoria Dawson 5 years ago

My current project is focused on military sites in East Anglia, in particular Royal Observer Corps (ROC) monitoring posts, used during the cold war from the late 1950s up until the 1990s.

I am interested in the coexistence of military and civilian landscapes, the people that volunteered to serve in the ROC posts and the re-examining of how the cold war impacted on lives in this region. I also aim to explore diverse areas such as heritage, preservation of site, power, surveillance and ownership of a multi-layered landscape, and question how military landscapes and geographies impact on our relationship with the environment and spatial understanding.

To begin with found websites which list the bunkers around the UK, specifically focusing on East Anglia. There are many of the underground sites which are generally inaccessible and to visit  some posts you have to trespass. Most are locked with rusting padlocks and chains to keep vandals out, others have been renovated and open to the public on certain days.

I interviewed a volunteer from the Brampton ROC, who served up until the 90s. He had a collection of equipment used on the sites, such as a four aperture pinhole camera called a Shadowgraph. This piece of equipment would sit on top of the post above ground and record the direction a theoretical thermal flash. The scorch marks would show where the explosion took place and whether it was a ground or air burst. The images below show the remains of a ROC post, and the shadowgraph interior with light sensitive graph paper.