Type 26 Pillbox

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Type 26 Pillbox
Type 26 Pillbox on Chesil Beach at East Bexington, Dorset
Crude loophole detail
Type 26 Pillbox showing rear off set doorway and its pebble dash camouflage

Key facts

  • Official designation: fw3/26
  • Shape: square
  • Central loop in each of three walls
  • Doorway and loops in fourth wall
  • Externally it is normally 10ft (3m) square
  • Walls 18″ (45cm) thick

This is probably the simplest of all but not the most common pillbox type. Variations in the standard design have been identified in Dorset, Kent and Somerset.

Type 26 beside the Anti-tank cubes Abbotsbury Dorset
Plan of Chesil Beach FW3/26 @ SY568839 Drawing copyright Tim Denton 2012
Type 26 Potbridge Hampshire part of GHQ Line A railblock on the main London to Bournemouth railway line

The ‘Dover quad’ is a 13ft (4m) square pillbox with an overhanging roof slab.

The ‘defence post’ found in Somerset is a little over 8ft (2.4m) square with walls about 14″-15″ (35-38cm) thick and have wide slits extending the full width of three faces. Some have an open section on top reached by rungs and a ladder. There is a blast wall covering the entrance, integral and roofed to form a porch.

This style of Type 26 Pillbox built to shellproof specification using breeze block shuttering can be found close to the railway line on the Taunton Stop line.
This style of Type 26 Pillbox built to shellproof specification using breeze block shuttering can be found close to the railway line on the Taunton Stop line in Somerset and Devon.

A prefabricated version known as a Stent was made from concrete panel and post sections, these can be found in the south of England especially on GHQ Line A in Hampshire and beside the Oxford Canal as well as the North East of England.

Type 26 Prefab, Known as a Stent
Type 26 Prefab, Known as a Stent

Information obtained from pillbox typology part 5  in ‘Loopholes’  journal of the PSG. With kind permission of Mike Osborne.