To be more geographically explicit it is the Yorkshire coastline, a broad swath of mixed landscapes onto the North Sea that has received the brunt of conflict and warfare.
The Romans used the Humber Estuary as a maritime gateway to their major garrison and administrative centre at York and beyond the northernmost reaches of their Empire.
There followed the insurgent forces of the mixed Germanic Tribes including Jutes and Frisians under their collective name of Anglo Saxons and then the Vikings.
After a bit of aggression and mayhem these peoples largely settled and became the ancestors of a good proportion of the modern day British population.
In the Middle Ages powerful families vied for control of the coastline and fast forward to the relative near history of the 18th Century and even a squadron of Franco Americans took on the British Navy at the Battle of Flamborough Head.
Towns were targeted by naval bombardment in 1914 with fatalities suffered but serving as a rallying cry to recruit to the British Armed Forces in those opening months of the First World War.
Adolf Hitler saw Yorkshire in an important strategic role in any post invasion subjugation of the nation.
It is speculated that he thought that the Grand Hotel in Scarborough would be suitable for his Northern Area Command HQ and if he also took the major Port of Hull he could drive a wedge across to Liverpool and split the country into manageable parts.
If you study any map of the Yorkshire Coast your eye is immediately drawn to the majestic sweep that is Bridlington Bay.
It stretches from the north and the chalk promontory of Flamborough Head all of the way South before the great curl of Spurn Point at the Humber mouth.
I have always thought that this would have been an ideal WW2 invasion site and it must have been considered by the Nazi military alongside or as an option to Operation Sealion which was the codename for the planned amphibious invasion across the English Channel.
Such intentions were easily second guessed by British commanders and a formidable string of observation and gun posts were constructed all along the cliff line to the full extent of Bridlington Bay.
Other defences comprised huge coarse concrete obstacles to, hopefully, impede the progress of Nazi tanks and vehicles and prevent the establishing of a workable bridgehead from which to strike inland.
The structures to be manned were substantial reinforced concrete blockhouses and bunkers with narrow slit openings to give line of sight and line of fire coverage of the sands or emplacements to lay down a cover of shells and bullets.
Large numbers of such Pill Boxes or "Baddies hideouts" as we used to call them (although incorrectly as they housed home defence troops) survive to this day although many have become associated with impromptu lavatories or for fly tipping.
Unfortunately for the Bridlington Bay structures the fragility of the cliff line, composed of boulder clays and amongst the fastest eroding in Europe has resulted in the rude depositing of the buildings onto the beach itself where they have, over the last few decades, been attacked by the tides.
Salt water and metal reinforcement are mortal enemies and the onset of corrosion has fractured and dispersed the cast elements across a wide distance.
I took these photographs just this morning of one of the main emplacements which is now well out in the tidal zone.
I recall visiting the beach as a teenager back in the late 1970's and seeing the same Pill Box and its neighbours well back on the crumbling cliffs and seemingly impregnable against time and tides as they were intended to be versus the Nazis.
The low ridge in the background is the current position of the cliff line onto a narrow footpath and agricultural fields. This shows fast pace of erosion.
The whole mass of concrete has taken a bit of a journey and rather than face out to sea is now with a north eastern orientation looking towards Bridlington.
This will have been a rough representation of
the outlook of an observer or sentry in the wartime years.
The wide expanse of the beach resembles the 1944 D Day images of the main Normandy Landing Sites of the Allied Forces
The inside-out view was startlingly bright on this August morning.
The interior was basic but functional for its occupants.
It must have been a bleak post in the winter months and at the time of the Spring Tides when onshore winds would chill to the bone with the Arctic air.
Under Blackout restrictions there would not even be any sparkling, welcoming lights from Bridlington nor the comforting sweep or booming foghorn from the Flamborough Lighthouse,
The marine growths have firmly taken to the concrete shell.
It is no coincidence that the shoreline around the old Pill Box and tank trap blocks was today a graveyard of the shells and limbs of crabs who have sought refuge in and under the mass of concrete sections only to be picked off by seagulls at the change of the tides.
The bunker is a very sad sight at low tide being lopsided and twisted and destined to deteriorate further into an unstable and potentially hazardous structure for the holidaymakers and day trippers who frequent the Bay.
It may take some considerable time for the bunker to reach the same stage as its immediate neighbour.
This similar sized structure is in a precarious state and something to avoid although still excites considerable interest and curiosity even now.
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