Lippitts Hill

Lippitts Hill

Lippitts Hill is a hill located in Epping Forest at High Beach, Waltham Abbey. It has played several historic roles in the defence and policing of London.

The hill was the site of a gun emplacement in the First World War and used as an anti-aircraft site in the Second World War.[1] The United States's 184th anti-aircraft artillery installed their own guns in 1941, and added an underground control room and block houses to the site.[1] A prisoner of war camp was established at Lippitts Hill by the British after the camp was abandoned by the Americans in 1944.[1] Relics from the Second World War at the camp include a memorial to the American forces that served there, and a concrete sculpture of a man, left by a German prisoner of war, Rudi Webber.[1] The local branch of the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist organisation, would invite local prisoners of war from the camp to their homes on Christmas Day.[2]

The hill was the location of the bodies in the Babes in the Wood murders in 1970.[3]

  1. ^ a b c d Michael Foley (30 October 2013). Essex At War From Old Photographs. Amberley Publishing Limited. pp. 147–. ISBN 978-1-4456-2818-9.
  2. ^ Pamela Howe Taylor (2003). The Germans We Trusted: Stories of Friendship Resulting from the Second World War. James Clarke & Co. pp. 165–. ISBN 978-0-7188-3034-2.
  3. ^ "UK | Violent past of Babes' killer". BBC News Online. 5 September 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2014.