The Unofficial Website for Tony Robinson

Time Team: Series 18, 2011 - Click on the links below for the different programmes.
Reservoir Rituals - Tottiford
Saxon Death, Saxon Gold - West Langton
Romans on the Range - High Ham
Hitlers Island Fortress - Les Gellettes, Jersey
The Furnace in the Forest - Derwentcote
Under the Gravestones - Castor
The House of the White Queen - Groby Hall
Cannons v. Castles - Mont Orgueil, Jersey
The Mystery of the Manor Moat - Llancaiach Fawr
Search for the Domesday Mill - Buck Mill
Rooting for the Romans - Bedford Purlieus Wood
Castle of the Saxon Kings - Bamburgh
Looking Underground - Geophysics Compilation
Hunters to Hearths - 'The way we lived' Compilation

Hitlers Island Fortress - Les Gellettes, Jersey

This week is unusual as Tony doesn't normally get to decide where the Team should dig, but in this episode he chooses his first ever site for investigation: a German anti-aircraft battery built during the Nazis' five-year occupation of Jersey.

The Team have never investigated anything quite like this before and had to apply all their skills to make sense of a site now reclaimed by a forest.
It's soon clear that the gun emplacements are part of a much bigger, complex fortified settlement that was home to hundreds of German soldiers equipped with a vast array of weapons. As this is recent history, the Team can talk to people who witnessed life under the occupation at first hand.

What emerges is a shocking story of a fortress island where German installations were built by slave labour and the local population began to starve as the war continued.
A story of terrible conditions that seem more fitting to the eras the Team usually investigate, rather than just 70 years ago. Over three days they uncover a fascinating and frequently horrifying glimpse of life during the war.

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More German Military Sites
While on Jersey, the opportunity arose to travel the island looking at some of the German Fortifications.

Sites visited included Strongpoint Corbiere, Batterie Lothringen at Noirmont Point and the sites at Les Landes and Moltke Battery.
The most impressive of the fortifications were the Naval Coastal artillery direction and range finding towers: MP1 at Noirmont Point, MP2 at La Corbiere and MP3 at Les Landes.

For anyone interested in World War II history then a visit to Jersey has to be a high priority, it has a vast array of sites to visit, all packed with history and archaeology and each one with a unique and evocative atmosphere. An amazing experience, there really is so much to see.