fortifications of East Anglia by Peter Kent
 
When the Armada set sail in 1588 the men of East Anglia were called from the harvest to take up arms, and earthen "bulwarks" were set up to defend the east coast. The aim of these defences was to deny the enemy fleet the use of anchorages where they could land troops as well as to repel parties who managed to get ashore.
 
In succeeding centuries increasingly complicated fortifications were built whenever invasion or attack threatened, though almost invariably they decayed and crumbled when the threat was removed.
 
During the seventeenth century one Suffolk fort was called upon to repel a Dutch assault, though most of the coastal defences were, perhaps fortunately, never put to the test.
 
With the Napoleonic threat martello towers and other defences were built along the Essex and Suffolk coast. Some of the towers survived long enough to be brought back into use for various purposes during the Second World War, at a time when coastal gun batteries and defence lines of pillboxes and machine-gun posts were being hurriedly constructed to counter the threat of German invasion.
 
The story of coastal fortifications came to an end in 1956, when changing techniques of warfare led to the abandonment of such defences.