Monument record MHG27886 - Pillbox - Evanton Airfield, Alness

Type 27 pillbox, brick and concrete, photo in J A Guy, 20th Century Defences, (report nos. 1, 8 & 11)
A M Fox, Highland Council, 10.10.01.
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NH66NW 34.07 6279 6683

A pillbox is situated on the E side of the airfield between a large ditch and the tidal area of Alness Bay.
The pillbox is unusual in having a dummy pitched roof on top to imitate a perimeter dispersal hut (Smith 1983).
Visited by RCAHMS (DE) January and May 1997

Alan Kinghorn photographed this pillbox in June 2011. <1>

This pillbox was noted in ARCH's Evanton Wartime Remains project in 2013. It was a brick and concrete type 27 pillbox. The door and the post for the bren gun for the anti aircraft fire was still in situ. The pillbox had a corrugated roof on top, but this had blown off and was in the grass beside it. The roof was thought to be a decoy for the building, but it does not appear on the 1944 aerial photograph. It was however there in the 1946 aerial photograph. Allan Kilpatrick (RCAHMS) believed that the roof was added to weather proof the gun pit in the roof after the war. The pillbox was probably sealed, perhaps post war, and the roof added, nailed into a skim of concrete laid around the rim. This would explain why such a large pillbox had such a small roof. Contributors: Alan Kinghorn, Allan Kilpatrick <2>

Email correspondece from A Kinghorn in October 2012 stated that the roof was no longer on top of the pill box but that is was lying at the side of the pillbox at hat time. <3>