31 March 2015
The island of Walney, linked by bridge to Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. The trenches uncovered there by archaeologists were hidden from the public record. Photo Lee Masson.
Archaeologists working on the remote Cumbrian island of Walney and on the Isle of Grain in Kent have revealed what were secret trench training grounds forgotten for over a century.
Training grounds and trench systems are not recorded or available on the public record. What the archaeologists have further accidentally revealed is that the Ordnance Survey maintained an embargo on all maps of Britain of any site classed as of military or sensitive importance.
So maps of Woolwich in South East London (famous for its arsenal and naval yards that Thatcher closed) are unmarked. The map embargo was lifted only in the late 1980s. One hundred years after the war its secrets are slowly outing the warmongers of Downing Street and the war ministries.