Cuxton's Field of Deception...

One of Cuxton’s more interesting WW2 secrets was the decoy airfield at the top end of Bush Valley.

Bush Valley, looking south from Upper Bush...

Cuxton’s decoy airfield was part of a British WW2 decoy programme which began in January 1940 and developed into a complex deception strategy, using four main methods: day and night dummy aerodromes (`K’ and `Q’ sites); diversionary fires (`QF’ sites and `Starfish’); simulated urban lighting (`QL’ sites); and dummy factories and buildings.  Urban decoy fires were known as `SF’, `Special Fires’ and Starfish, to distinguish them from the smaller QF installations.  These were the most technically sophisticated of all the types, with each Starfish replicating the fire effects an enemy aircrew would expect to see when their target had been successfully set alight.

This campaign of illusion was masterminded by an engineer and retired Air Ministry officer, Colonel John Fisher Turner, who formed a team of film studio tradesmen, carpenters, and engineers for the construction of an elaborate network of dummy airfields and hundreds of decoy sites

These decoy sites were set up in large areas of open space to protect the real sites they were imitating, which could be towns, military bases, factories, airfields or railway marshalling yards and docks, in an ingenuous attempt to trick the Luftwaffe.

Across Bush Valley towards Cuxton, view from the edge of Longbottom Wood...

Cuxton’s simple “Q-site” night-time decoy consisted of a double row of “landing lights” powered by a generator, with the probable intent of protecting the nearby RAF 11 Group airfield at Gravesend located near the top of Thong Lane. 

Probably to the relief of Upper Bush residents it did not attract many enemy bombs, but it may have  induced one of our own aircraft to crash.  The aircraft was returning from a raid of Chemmitz on 6th March 1945, in a crippled condition and without radio contact.  The American pilot and his Canadian crew, perhaps fooled by the decoy airfield, crashed their aircraft into woodland on Bavins Bank and all were sadly killed.

It is believed that there were around 230 dummy airfields in the UK and 400 dummy urban and industrial sites, although very little now survives of any of these decoys, most having been cleared after the war.

The blockhouse that held the generator for the Bush Valley decoy landing lights can still be found in Longbottom Wood, however...

The generator is long gone but the inside of the structure is accessible and the concrete plinth where the generator stood still remains...

Opposite what was probably once the generator room, another chamber with a roof hatch and ladder can be seen. Perhaps this was where the fuel tank for the generator once was...

Although there is no fencing or signage, I am guessing that the woodland is privately owned, and that the owner would not like too many visitors tromping through and disturbing his pheasants to see this piece of Cuxton's WW2 history.

Update:  I have since found out that the land has been acquired by Vineyard Farms Ltd. They do not care much for trespassers, so be warned. Nevertheless, the location of the blockhouse is as below....

The blockhouse is actually indicated on the OS map for the area, so its location is no great secret. If you do visit the area, be careful. The condition of the site has deteriorated since I was first there in December 2018, with the blockhouse now being surrounded by brambles and a half-arsed attempt to screen it off with Heras fencing. So please respect both your own safety and the property ownership,  and don't go climbing over it. The site could be made into quite an interesting and safe area to visit with a little thought, but I don't see that happening somehow. Instead, I think it is more likely to be completely fenced off or simply demolished.

On the opposite eastern edge of Bush Valley field from Longbottom Wood runs the North Downs Way. Heading south from Upper Bush takes you across Dean Farm valley, which was looking very picturesque in the late autumn sunshine...

Dean Farm...

Dean Farm Valley...

Stonyfield House...

Mid-November brings the true onset of winter to the woods of Halling and Cuxton and the trees begin shedding their leaves as if they mean it.  Sycamores, maples and chestnuts usually lead the way, followed by elm, ash, and then finally the oaks and beeches.  Within a couple of short weeks, most deciduous trees are bare-branched, with just the beeches hanging on to a few brown leaves.

This opens up the shady woodland and makes things a bit easier to see, of course. And Stoneyfield House (or at, least, what is left of it) is something that becomes much more obvious in autumn.

Walking along the North Downs way from Church Hill leads through Mays Wood.  At the cross roads with the Warren, the North Downs way takes a sharp right and heads off down Bush Valley, but a good track continues on through into Wingate Wood, an older and once heavily-coppiced and managed piece of woodland.

Most of the larger trees in this area were lost to the Great Storm of 1987, and many of its victims still lie on either side of the path, the chalk-encrusted roots having been levered out of the chalk substrate to present themselves as white, ivy-encrusted tombstones, monuments to the forest’s loss.



Further on down the path, the woodland seems to be a little more sheltered, and many of the larger trees remain, giving a feel for what Wingate Woods must once have been like throughout.  Here, the oak and beech still had some green leaves to contrast with the gold, and even some of the ash and chestnuts are still holding on to a few leaves that their less-sheltered brethren elsewhere have long since lost.

At the clearing where the high-voltage cables cross above, Wingate Wood becomes Thistly Spring Wood.  This wood is similar in nature to the last part of Wingate Wood, with fewer coppices and more widely-spaced, larger trees.  About 500 yards in on the right, the remains of Stonyfield House can be seen through them, only about 10 yards off the main track.

Little seems to be recorded about this isolated structure. Stonyfield House is referenced on Ordnance Survey maps, but in very few other places.  It is sited close to the open field of Stoneyfield Shaw and perhaps once overlooked Stonyfield Woods away to the west. 

The area to the north of the cottage was an open field at the turn of the twentieth century, as the 1908 OS map shows...

1908 OS map showing Stonyfield House (centre)...

The original structure must have been around 10 yards across on each side, with single-storey flint walls, although only the eastern side of the flint wall still remains standing.  On the west side, there seems to be some newer, crude brickwork added, and what little remains of a pitched roof on one side clad in corrugated iron, held up with a timber frame. 

On the north side there is a hand pump and well cover, with a pipe running into the ground. The presence of a well suggests that this lonely, isolated building might once have been inhabited. The pump itself is an Excelsior No.5 reciprocating pump: this brand has been in production since 1919 right up until today.

The only direct on-line reference to a structure with the “Stonyfield” name in Halling comes from a summary of a 1901 census. Back then, “Stony Field Cottage” appeared to be the home of Mr Alfred Wisbey, his wife Elizabeth and their seven (!) children. The children, four sons and three daughters, ranged in age from 3 to 16, with the eldest, Samuel, following his father’s profession as a gamekeeper.

Certainly the structure in Thistly Spring Wood could well be the remains of a gamekeeper’s cottage, but it seems difficult to believe that a family of nine could once have lived there.  Life must have been harsh for the Wisbey family indeed, if this was once Stony Field Cottage. They must have been resilient, hard-working people, living a life of hardship that we cosseted and privileged folk in modern Britain cannot begin to imagine.

According to correspondence on the “Old Pictures of Halling” Facebook page, the cottage was subsequently, for a while, home to Rodney and Jack Rodgers, both gamekeepers who worked for the cement company who owned the land. The shed at the side was used by Rodney (and, prior to him, by a Mr. Macmillan) to rear pheasants that were subsequently released for the shoot in the nearby hills.

A Mr. Jack Rogers at Stonyfield House (photo posted by Paul Bullivant on the "Old Pictures of Halling" Facebook page)

The picture of Jack Rogers above was apparently taken by a Mr. Ronald Homewood, who at one point had a vegetable garden up there. A sad story relates the tale of Mr. Homewood’s brother Bill, who apparently committed suicide at the cottage by taking the lid off the water well and drowning himself. By all accounts, Bill had gone up the cottage after a pint or two in the nearby Robin Hood pub, and went to pat one of Jack’s dogs that was asleep. Startled, the dog attacked Bill and tore off his lip. Bill was offered plastic surgery but, in a fit of depression, killed himself before he went for treatment. In the aftermath, Rodney Rogers took the unfortunate dog up to the woods and shot it.

Whilst not lived in, Stonyfield House appears to have been in use right up until the 1970s, with its associated garden still being tended, as this 1973 photograph appears to indicate...

"Ruins of Stonyfield House with shed and garden" (picture by Derek Church, 1973)...

The area is now overgrown and choked with brambles and bushes.

On the way back I noticed that in several places, "fairy rings" of mushrooms were growing up through the leaves on the woodland floor.  I think these might be Clouded Agaric...

  

I understand that Clouded Agaric are edible, but I really don't trust my fungus identification skills to the extent that I would actually try one.  Because they might be Brown Roll Rims instead...