Description

The monument comprises the remains of two pillboxes of the 1939-45 war, situated to the E of the original line of the B974 Cairn o'Mount road. The new line of the B974 now runs between them.

The structures appear to be part of a line designed to block the passes across the Mounth and the hills to the west, to halt any southern-moving invasion force arriving on the beaches of Aberdeenshire. The structures may therefore be considered to be an extension of the stop line along the Cowie Water to the east. However, the firing slits on the boxes seem as much to cover the southern as the northern approaches; indeed their position on the north side of the river suggests they may be designed to stop a north-moving force.

Both pillboxes are built into, and are carefully disguised to look like, the red granite wall surrounding the garden of the farmhouse. The eastern pillbox is rectangular, c. 5m by 3m. The western pillbox is fitted into the the curved NW corner of the wall as it turns to the south.

The area to be protected is limited to the pillboxes themselves and a zone of c. 2m around the outer surface of the walls, as well as the surviving fragments of the granite wall linking them and an area c. 2m from both faces of the wall, the irregular area being as marked in red on the attached map. Road surfaces and the existing crash barriers are specifically excluded from the scheduling.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance as a well-preserved pair of Second World war defences, a concrete reminder of a perilous time in British history. The pillboxes are particularly interesting because of the very careful efforts made to disguise them as masonry structures ' a feature not seen elsewhere on the Cowie Line or in the areas immediately to the north and west, where concrete with turf covering was the norm.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as NO 68 NE 9.01.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland