Hartlepool sound mirror

Hartlepool Mail letter about a sound mirror

There was a sound mirror at Hartlepool, but unfortunately it has been demolished.

The Historic England listing for the Boulby sound mirror says the Hartlepool one was “located at High Springwell 17km away [from Boulby] to the north of the estuary and was orientated to cover the north eastern approaches” and “was demolished in the 1960s.”

There is a reference to this Hartlepool sound mirror on the Hartlepool Mail website dated 20 June 2007. Hartlepool resident JW Perrin mentions a sound mirror or “Zeppelin Listening Post” in the Clavering area, and asks for more details. Perrin says the mirror was constructed in or about 1916, which would make it a contemporary of the Redcar structure. A sketch accompanying the text shows a mirror with the same design as the ones at Boulby and Redcar. It was “demolished possibly in the early Sixties when the new housing development commenced”.

Perrin says the Hartlepool mirror “played an important part in the Air Defence of the North-East Region in World War One, including the shooting-down of the Zeppelin over Teesmouth on November 27, 1916”. This was L34 (LZ.78), shot down by 2nd Lieutenant Ian Pyott flying BE2c aircraft number 2738. Photo of the Zeppelin in flames, information on the German officer in charge, information on the raid.

Location

Unknown: High Springwell? Clavering? More information would be very welcome.

3 thoughts on “Hartlepool sound mirror

  1. I remember the Sound Mirror being at the top end of Clavering Road. It was the end of Clavering Road at the time. The local buses used to stop alonside it. There was a turning circle for the buses to turn and go back down Clavering Road.
    We moved from Sheriff Street in the town to Clavering in 1971. The Sound Mirror was still there then. So it could not have been demolished in the early sixties. I remember climbing up onto the top and looking over the North sands to the sea with my friends as a young boy. The mirror was situated around fifty metres past, and on the same side as the entrance gates to the Clavering school. The School had not been built by then though.

    1. Having come across this subject of Sound Mirrors from the BBC News site,I looked at OldMaps of the area in question for the Hartlepool Sound Mirror.A 1939 1:2500 OS map shows the site at the side of a Bridle Route running westward from Easington Road,by using an overlay from the NLS site I transposed the position on to Google Earth and that site is at 54.71144N 1.24979W
      The Old Maps url is:
      https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/448450/535430/12/101200

    2. I can remember seeing the sound mirror being extant at Clavering Estate around 1970/71. My cousin Peter lived at Bellasis Grove and he, my brother Ian and I used to regularly explore the wasteland beyond the then limit of Clavering Estate which as Steve Porritt correctly states above, was at the top of Clavering Road where the Corporation buses used to terminate at that time.

      However, although I could easily be wrong, my recollection is that the mirror was further north than the location that
      Steve describes, as we did not discover it for quite some time after my cousin and his family moved into Bellasis Grove which is very close to Steve’s description of the mirror site.

      There is currently (October 2022) an archaeologic dig going on opposite Clavering School which almost fits Steve’s description of the mirror’s former location – albeit on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.