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Concept
Hankley Common
Summary
Hankley Common is a nature reserve and filming location in the south-west of Elstead in Surrey. It is owned by the Ministry of Defence. The site is part of the Thursley, Hankley and Frensham Commons Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area and Site of Special Scientific Interest. The site has woodland and lowland heath with heather and gorse. Birds include nightjars and Dartford warblers and there are other fauna such as adders and common lizards.
Access is subject to the needs of military training, with frequent training exercises and multiple buildings present.
D-Day training sites were created in Britain in order to practise for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Northern France by allied forces in 1944. In 1943, in an area of the Common known as the Lion's Mouth, Canadian troops constructed a replica of a section of the Atlantic Wall. It is constructed from reinforced concrete and was used as a major training aid to develop and practise techniques to breach the defences of the French coast prior to the D-Day landings. The wall is about long, high by wide. It is divided into two sections between which there were originally steel gates. Nearby are other obstacles such as dragon's teeth, reinforced concrete blocks and lengths of railway track set in concrete and with wire entanglements.
Many of the relics show signs of live weapons training and the main wall has two breaches caused by demolition devices including the Double Onion: a specialised demolition vehicle, one of Hobart's Funnies, based on the Churchill tank. The reinforced concrete was made with rebars varying from thick. Over the years the wall has become colonised by alkaline-loving lichens, mosses, ferns and other plants because the concrete provides the lime-based substrate that these species require and which is found nowhere else in the locality. They present an unusual range of plants to be found in an expanse of acid heathland. The preservation of the Wall is managed by Army Training Estates with the assistance of the MOD Hankley Conservation Group.
Official source
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