Downsforce Project

Recent Downsforce blog posts:

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Finding the gun pits

Posted:02 March 2010

An unexpected present last Christmas was a manual for the 2-pounder anti-tank gun. A diagram of the gun pit to be excavated when digging in led me up onto the Downs to see if any were evident. More...

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Yet another Downs locality

Posted:22 October 2009

An excursion in search of an underground battle headquarters took me into a small trenched locality on the Downs. I also found a small hand grenade fragment. More...

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A new locality and trench #300!

Posted:20 October 2009

An excursion last week saw me finally locate a missing company locality on the Downs - an amazing haul of 31 trenches took me well over the 300 mark. More...

The Downsforce project was sparked by the discovery of a series of orders in both British and Canadian documents outlining how the high ground between the River Ouse and Cuckmere River was to be defended against German paratroops or from troops advancing inland from a seaborne invasion force.

The photograph below gives an idea of the South Downs landscape that Downsforce was to hold.

Study method

Because Downsforce was to defend a certain type of landscape from static positions, fieldwork is the main focus of this project; as usual it has been guided by documentary research.

Fieldwork has been highly successful, identifying a total of 337 features to date. The lesson that has been learnt is that a lot of evidence does still survive in the landscape; the reason it has been missed thus far is because I'm targeting areas indicated by the documents and not just aimlessly wandering the countryside looking for things that may or may not be there.

It's hard to describe the feeling of reading about a platoon locality and then actually finding the evidence on a wind-swept hillside, but having located over 100 earthworks to date, it's a feeling I've been experiencing a lot!