Acrise Patrol

The OB was in the woods (Pillars Wood or Acrise Wood) near to Winterage Farm, which belonged to the Patrol Leader, Charlie Godden. The trap door was a lump of hazel coppice and the whole thing would rise vertically. There was a small gap to squeeze through and then down a ladder into the bunker. The escape tunnel was packed with explosives so was never used. Cattle were allowed to trample the area to hide any footprints.

It was an elephant shelter design which are quite rare in Kent. The main shelter is still standing but unfortunately entrance and escape tunnel have collapsed.

In the 1980s the OB was found by David Wilkinson: "I was an officer in a cadet unit. Some of the cadets were camped in Souge Wood when one of them asked me why there was an old metal ladder buried in the ground and in the roots of a tree. I went over and it was embedded in the roots but there was a hole it went into. The first time I went in it was fairly clear inside, just like a large Anderson shelter that went in to a smaller second room with what I thought was a chimney at one end but this turned out to be another entrance/exit that I could get out of. The floor at that time had quite a few bricks laying around but it was dry inside. The walls, some were ordinary brick whilst the main one was breeze block. From what I recall there were no beds or frames down there but there were rusty old fittings on the wall but I just wondered what they were rather than recognise or identify them. Over the next couple of years I remember it getting more filled up with bricks and breeze blocks to about knee-waist high making it more awkward to get in it. After about 4 years from first finding it, I was reading about Auxiliary Units and saw a sketch of a typical bunker and realised just what it was".