The west London tube station with a military fixture.
Stand at the southern end of Putney Bridge station and you'll get the view above. Looks fairly routine, right? But then you notice the somewhat camouflaged building on the left. It stands out more if you retreat a little...
Now we see more clearly a weathered brick box with narrow apertures. Look still more closely and you'll notice that these windows have sloped sides, like them's what you get on medieval castles. They are, in fact, embrasures, designed to protect a defender while offering a wide range of shooting angles.
So why would a railway station in leafy Fulham boast such an unusual feature?
Basically, it's a second world war pillbox. The defensive structure overlooks Putney Railway Bridge, which would have served as a key crossing point should the Nazis have successfully invaded southern England.
The box was installed in 1940 as part of London's inner defences, under the guidance of Commander in Chief of Home Forces, Baron Edmund Ironside. (If that eyebrow-raising name sounds familiar, it was shared by a Saxon king, whose Viking-bashing exploits are memorialised a little upriver in Brentford.)
Several of London's bridges once carried similar structures, as can be seen in this remarkable map of war fortifications. Almost all have long-since vanished, but you can spot another example just north of Barnes Railway Bridge. Others can be found at Thamesmead, the Royal Docks and several in Hornchurch Country Park.
