The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and the Northern Ireland War Memorial (NIWM) welcome you to a talk by Dr James O'Neill.

With the Fall of France and the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk in 1940, there was a very real possibility the apparently invincible Wehrmacht would invade the United Kingdom. While Britain and Commonwealth forces regrouped, hopes of repelling any future invasion were placed in the rapidly constructed concrete defences along beaches and rivers. Moreover, the threat also came from the air. Therefore, active gun defences and passive radar networks were established to guard the skies over the north. This talk will look at where these were built and what still remains.

Dr James O’Neill is a historian of early modern Ireland and a specialist in defence heritage archaeology in Northern Ireland. Having completed the Defence heritage resurvey for Northern Ireland for DfC: Historic Environment Division in 2023, he is now the collections officer at the NI War Memorial Museum.

The lecture will take place on Thursday 29 May 2025 at PRONI (2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast, BT3 9HQ) starting at 1pm.

* Register for a FREE ticket via Eventbrite: Beaches, fields, and landing grounds: defending Northern Ireland during WW2 *