The western defence line around Colchester clearly used the Bluebottle Grove section of Lexden Dyke as an anti-tank obstacle as pillboxes overlooked it from its east bank and the wartime anti-tank ditch continued the path of the dyke from its southern end. At the north end of Bluebottle Grove a pillbox can be seen on May 1946 aerial photographs.<1>

It is a large, hexagonal type with its entrance on the NE face, probably of the same 20’ across pattern as those seen on the Eastern Command Line north and northwest of Colchester. This pillbox is recorded in contemporary documentation, "O.S. No. 1227 - Pillbox and apron wire ... Magazine Fruit Farm, Park Road. Map ref. 422429" (Mil. Ed.).<2> Nothing now survives in this location.

See also <3> & <4>.