FW3/22 in Cambridgeshire

Wardy Hill Cambridgeshire - Type FW3/22 S0004915

Wouldn't normally have bothered posting this, but I'm curious about something and wondered if anyone can shed light on it?

Bog standard FW3/22 sat in the middle of a field. The door is blocked and it's slap bang in the middle of a field full of cows, so I do didn't try and gain entry to avoid annoying the farmer. In all of the loopholes, there were wooden blocks, which look pretty ancient and seem to fit the grooves down the sides of the holes. Are these an original feature? Some sort of gun rest? Or just a farmer's attempt to board it up which happened to fit the grooves neatly?



Close-up.

I've never seen anything like that before, but it does make me wonder why the farmer would go to the trouble of blocking up a bit, but not all, of the loophole!
Maybe they were used for something originally, but as I said, I've not seen or read about it.
Interesting!

Thanks Foxy. I did wonder if they were originally fully boarded up, but all of them were the same with just the lower section, so that seems unlikely. If the top sections were going to fall off, I'd have expected at least one to fall off completely. My gut feeling is that it's probably original and just happens to have survived as it's right out in the back end of nowhere - but I'm not sure if it's functional, or put there by the local lads to cut down the draught

Looked at this last night and decidede to sleep on it,and this morning..............still no idea at all.Will file it away in some dusty corner of my mind and think on it !

All the pillboxes I have seen with blocked up embrasures have been bricked up or blocked using stone. Like Foxy said I cannot see the farmer only half blocking them up. Judging by the design of the wooden shutters it would have taken someone inside the box to hold them as the front was nailed on (or vice versa) so they were added before the door was blocked up. I'd say they were original but just to throw another posibility into the mix (although probably wrong) The pillbox was used as a defence for a search light site (Defence of Britain Database) so they maybe put the shutters in to stop the glare from the light if some personel stayed in the pillbox when the light was operational.