Author: Andrew Grantham

A sound mirror in Seaham?

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Raymond Thompson of the Seaham Family History Group writes to say that “One of our elderly residents seems to recall a concrete structure (long gone) which he believes to have been a sound mirror situated on an elevated site in Seaham, County Durham about 2 miles from the coast.” On seeing a picture of the Sunderland Carley Hill Mirror he said it was the same design, and another Seaham resident “remembers it vividly”.

There isn’t a mirror in Seaham today, so presumably it has now been demolished, but does anyone know more? The north eastern mirors are all a bit of mystery, no-one seems to know anything about them. While I don’t really know the area, from a map I’d guess that Hartlepool and Seaham would be good locations for mirrors if some kind of chain had exisited incorporating the surviving mirrors at Boulby, Redcar and Sunderland.

Books mentioning the northeast and Joss Gap

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Clive Kidd gets in touch to say that sound mirrors get several mentions in The Baby Killers – German Air Raids on Britain in the First World War by Thomas Fegan, (Leo Cooper, 2003 ISBN 0-85052-893-3). pp153-4 Boulby and Redcar, pp176-7 Sunderland and p116 Kilnsea, briefly outlining a system of quadrants for plotting.

EW Sockett in Tyne Tees Defended:1 in World War 1 1914-18 RNAS RFC RAAF (ISBN 0952 8217 02) gives maps and further details of three north-east coast mirrors and WW1 observer lines. Also gets a write up in in T/T Defended II 1914-1941 ISBN 0-952-8217-1-0. He also gives lots of references to other articles he has written on Tyne Tees Defences, mainly in the Yorkshire Antiquites Journal.

Prof R W F Burns gives them a small bit in his IEE Hist of Tech paper on the detection and loction of aircraft and refers to a paper in Kew PRO “report 87 Preliminary report on Joss Gap Station of the acoustical section SEE W S Tucker 22 Sep 1920 AVIA 23/84 PRO Kew. Also has a ref to “Location of a/c by sound Journal of the American physical Society Vol XiV N02 1919 PP166-7.

Sound mirror updates

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Interest in acoustic mirrors continues to grow. Among a backlog of e-mails, I’ve been told that

  • There are a pair of acoustic mirrors at the excellent Snibston Discovery Park in Leicestershire. Anyone know more?
  • The Aeroplane monthly published a story on sound mirrors sometime in
    the 1970s
  • An email from RAF Boulmer says they have been discussing sound mirrors in training (hopefully along with more recent technology!).
  • The CD booklet for the 2004 album We Pray The Brooze by The Fujii uses an image of a sound mirror.
  • But most excitingly, a new sculpture is being planned for construction by the River Witham about 2 miles east of Lincoln, including a concrete listening device.

Warden Point sea defences

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Now the bad news. Greg writes from Warden Bay:

a bit concerned about the future of our sound mirror. Basically government funding has now been sourced to install a rock sea defence along the bottom of the cliff to stop it eroding (probably the same as at Bartons Point, Minster). This would go along the beach to near where the mirror is located, but I would hate to see it buried in the rocks. The mirror is something quite historic, and has become a local landmark, often known as the “listening ear”. … I haven’t seen the plan for the proposed works or the impact they would have on the mirror, and don’t know whether it has any kind of preservation order on it.

Wouldn’t it be great if, while they have huge machines on the beach, if the mirror could be moved up the beach a bit, so as to ebate its decay in the sea?

Oh, by the way, the “cracked” thing was done by an artist(?) who did this sort of stuff all round the island! A waste of time if you ask me – all that effort would have been far more useful maybe erecting a plaque or something to explain, to the hundreds of people who use the beach, exactly what the concrete remains used to be, and how they played a vital part in our history.