N18 Searchlight Site, Winterborne Kingston, Dorset

To visit, you can park off the road and walk west up the track. Please remember that the huts are in a private garden, but you can see everything from the track.

WW2 : this searchlight is at the bottom of a wide valley S/W of Blandford. These lights were not only used to light up enemy aircraft, but they could also direct lost aircraft to an airfield. By pointing at the plane and then swinging to the direction either another light or to the airfield. Many planes and crews were saved this way. There was a whole network of individual lights all across the country.

The searchlight base and the path to the hutments. There are three curved asbestos Turner huts in the garden, the fourth hut is inside the small woodland.

A short walk up the track brings lovely views over the valley of the Winterborne.

The three huts nestling in the garden of a private house and the fourth in the wood, there would have been a generator to power the search light either in one of the huts or on a trailer set somewhere in the garden.

Base for Searchlight

Curved asbestos huts originally manufactured from 1942 by Turners of Trafford Park, Manchester and cost was about £160-0s-0d, (that's in old money).

Another look at the air photo..