site of WWII firing range, Badbury Woods, Buscot and Coleshill Estates

Summary

The site of a Second World War firing range in Badbury Woods, used as a training firing range for the Auxillary Unit, based at Coleshill House.

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Description

Site of WWII rifle range on the west side of Badbury Woods associated with the auxiliary training base at Coleshill. The following is taken from Dr W Ward 'Report on a suspected firing range, possibly used by Auxiliary Units in woods between Faringdon and Coleshill'.

Bill Ashby, a CART researcher interviewed Eddie Cox, a former wartime resident of Coleshill, who as a teenage boy, explored the woods between Faringdon and Coleshill House. He had discovered the suspected firing range and remembered collecting bullets from there. Eddie Cox took Bill Ashby to the site and confidently identified it, even though he had not been there for 60 years and said that it had changed significantly in appearance. He reported that during the war, there was a horseshoe shaped, near vertical, sandy cliff. There were no trees below the cliff. Since then, the area has been managed as a forestry plantation and used for recreation. Below the cliff there are now mature pine trees. The cliff is now slumped, with animal burrows in many areas (1) The site is located in woodland to the west of Badbury Hill, on the Coleshill estate. It is on the side of the woodland closest to Coleshill House, the site of a wartime training base for Auxiliary Units.

Initial exploration of the site on 11th May 2011 revealed no obvious evidence of a firing range. However, a large piece of metal was identified and recovered, together with a right angled piece of metal drilled with holes (Figs 1 – 3). These have subsequently been identified as pieces of an inter-war Vickers Medium tank, specifically including the area of the air inlet for the engine (2). The location of this find is shown on Map 1. There is also an eye witness testimony from Horace and Bill Plaskett (Auxiliary Unit members trained at Coleshill House) that one activity which formed part of their training at Coleshill was to find a tank in the woods and blow it up with sticky bombs (4). It may be that this was the location of the tank described, or that a piece of this tank was brought to this location. [1-2]

Site visited by NT archaeologist Gary Marshall on 9/4/2019. The site appears to be a large sand pit measuring approximately 30m in width (north-south), 45m in length (east-west) and up to 5m deep, increasing in depth from west to east. On the floor of the pit near to its back (east) edge is a 3m wide and 1m high spoil heap, perhaps associated with the use of the site as a rifle range. [3]

A pamphlet guide by B. Ashby describes the small arms firing range as …'sited in Badbury Woods where the Auxillilers could fire pistols, rifles, Thompson sub-machin guns and possibly captured German weapons" [4]

The 'sand pit' described by the authority above (Source 3) is visible on recent lidar imagery. [5]

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