Mendip Hills AONB

3. Tumps and the Heinkel He 111

t Volunteers from walking groups in Cheddar and Bristol helped local y t people to build the tumps. Bristol e i c o building company, Cowlins were S y r brought in to build more at 4s 6d o t s i each. The man in the hat was Dr H l a

c Tricks of Blagdon. His son, Norman o L Tricks (below) was about 12 years old n o d

g at the time and clearly remembers a l B

building the tumps late into the night o t

s during Double British Summertime. k n a h T By the summer of 1940, the fear of invasion by the German Luftwaffe prompted preventative action. On Black Down, tumps were built to prevent aircraft landing and taking off again. The tumps were arranged in a formal grid pattern covering an area of 2,150m by y

680m. The tumps were covered in turf in the hope that e l s d they would be hard to detect from the air by day. r a B

t r a u Soon after, the tumps were integrated into the decoy t S town. About 1800 tumps or mounds remain – many more once covered the fields to the south of Black q A Luftwaffe map marking Cheddar Down. Others have eroded over time. Reservoir as a navigational aid.

q The tumps from the air in the 1980s. n w y o n r n B

e d P l a n n h o o J D

o o t t

s s k k n n a a h h T T Mendip Hills AONB

OS MAP Explorer 141: Cheddar Gorge & Mendip Hills West Landranger 182: Weston-super-Mare CONTACT 01761 462338 mendiphills@somerset.gov.uk

WAR WALK m

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A new War Walk on u

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Black Down is available r

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to download from the l

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Discovering Black Down e

p m project website. I

You can also listen to On 14 August 1940, three German Heinkel He 111s came down interviews with people locally. This one crashed into a wall at Charterhouse Warren Farm, who were involved and probably due to technical problems. Dr Tricks, a senior member of download this and other the Home Guard, was sent to arrest the pilot. Norman Tricks, his factsheets in this series. son went with him and vividly remembers seeing one frightened pilot who they thought, had dropped his bombs over Liverpool. Another documented version of events, researched by Blagdon Local History Society, records four or even five crew members and that the bombs had been jettisoned at Edington Burtle. Yet another version of this event that seems to have entered local folklore, is that there were two pilots, arrested by the Home

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Guard carrying pitchforks for weapons. Before they could be a

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e taken anywhere, it is rumoured that the farmer’s wife said: l

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English Channel and that ,

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he had landed in France.” c

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Norman Tricks R