Hidden First World War Heritage of the Lickey Hills

The Lickey Hills Local History Society has received £10,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for a project, Hidden Heritage of the Lickey Hills. Awarded through HLF’s First World War: then and now programme, the project will focus on recording and researching buildings on Bilberry Hill in the Lickey Hills Country Park that date from the Great War.
They are an unusual, possibly unique, collection, consisting of two gun butts for testing field guns, a partially demolished munitions store, a gun emplacement, two Army mess rooms and a toilet block. There were other buildings since lost – a bunker and a possible officers’ mess and stable block.
The project will be carried out in partnership with the Lickey Hills Society and the Birmingham Park Ranger Service. It will be supported by the Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service.
The Official Launch event took place on Monday 20th March with around forty supporters and members of the press, held in the school room at the Visitor Centre – formerly the soldiers’ mess.  Worcestershire World War One Hundred Bell Tent team was present to add a touch of period detail, and Val Hunt provided appropriate refreshments with a “trench cake” from a recipe of the time and howitzer and rifle shaped biscuits. The weather improved just in time for a guided walk around the site – with trench replica mud included.

Posted on 22nd March 2017