We've already got an article covering some of the details of the wartime concrete beaches at Wemyss Bay (which you will all have read already of course ), but I was scouting around for some other info and found something I had forgotten about down there, and which still seems to be a bit of a mystery, and since we seem to be on a mystery trip at the moment, I thought I'd drop in the link

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/444363

Since there's only two or three looking, I'm dropping in an image link for the moment, even though it's frowned on (a dozen views will hardly breaks geographs bandwidth)...



It's probably a fairly safe assertion that this is a World War II leftover from the training carried out on the Clyde, but with the upper part clearly chopped off, what was it?

As usual, I'm not dropping my ideas off first, since I've been looking at it for ages and have therefore reached the hallucination stage.

My initial thoughts are that it looks like the base of a hand winch although what it would have been used for is anyone's guess given that it was a training beach for landing craft.

I'm guessing the V-groove formed by the two rods bolted across the upper section is deliberate, and not a later vandalism.

The first thought was that it would form a handy recess for a keel to sit in, but the craft concerned would have to be extremely narrow, if you consider the the width constraint that the left and right frames, which have been vandalised and smashed off, and would have been much taller, impose on anything that would have rested on the V they form.

You'd be down at canoe level, and even the heaviest canoes would see this structure's engineering as overkill.

I had even thought of our old friend, the X-Craft (miniature submarines, which did use the Firth of Clyde for training), but they'd never fit as the frames are angled inward, meaning the space would be even narrower at the upper deck level of the craft, so that's a non-runner.

I'll stick my neck out a bit, and have a kick at the winch idea, because if the winding gear was on the frame, then it wouldn't be able to winch anything onto the V, unless it was mounted way up above and had an overly complicated arrangement of pulleys to leave the space clear. However, I'm only going for that in terms of having the winch on the frame. Suppose there was something to the right (as we look at the pic) that pulled something up the beach onto the frame? Considering military use, this might just have been a big army truck, used to tow the subject up the beach to the frame.

Then again, the missing upper part might have supported a larger V, that the hull could have rested on, and the lower V just had the rods bent for clearance?

And then there's purpose. Why would you want something located so securely at that point?

I doubt mooring in the sense of storage, and am tending towards some sort of secure fixing for a vessel while it was being worked on, possibly for service and maintenance.

Yup, ok, started rambling and need to go lie down again

I agree that the V looks deliberate but I am not sure that it was as it would not form a very strong method of locating the sides which seem to be sloping inwards.

A hand winch of course has a set of gears to multiply the effort, the higher the multiplication the more or larger and smaller the gears required.  Could just be for clearance.

Think of the V as just accommodating and clearing the prow, but even so, the two look to be about the same height, so being set to avoid hitting a keel still seem likely.

Hand winch is fine, but the problem is it would seem to need to occupy the same space as whatever might be sitting above the bent V.

However, suppose this is just a winch base, pure and simple?

The the V could be nothing more than a simple gesture to keep the cable reasonably central without fouling or grabbing, and there was a cable drum between the sides, operated by a handle to the side, left and/or right side. The drum and winch gear are all lost now, and are what would have been contained in the upper area, now broken off and lost.

I've a few heavy cable drums that have no guide at all, and the contents will rewind themselves lopsided if allowed to run free, but just organising things so the cable comes back in roughly central makes a big difference, and it organises itself into a reasonably well layered winding as it return, having only half the drum width to traverse, instead of the whole length if it allowed to return off centre.

My contact in Wemyss Bay readily identified it as a winch used to correct mistakes made by landing craft when approaching the concrete beach.

I also asked him about the HAA Batteries.  He asserts that there wasn't a battery at Wemyss Bay, nearest one Greenock!  He does not know anything about the post war one as he had left WB by that time.

My contact in Wemyss Bay readily identified it as a winch used to correct mistakes made by landing craft when approaching the concrete beach.

I also asked him about the HAA Batteries.  He asserts that there wasn't a battery at Wemyss Bay, nearest one Greenock!  He does not know anything about the post war one as he had left WB by that time.

In searching through my mind to come up with anything of a military nature in the Wemyss Bay area, the only thing i touched on was the hotel a bit further down the coast as one entered Largs. This hotel was called "Hollyrood", or Holy-something-or-other. The entrance to the grounds of this hotel always had an armed naval guard at the entrance during the war. I don't know what it was, but i recall reading somewhere that it was the place where the very first meeting with regard to the invasion of France was held. Mountbatten was at this time, I think, still the leader of the British Combimed Operations and it was he who convened the meeting. The hotel is no longer there. All i remember about it is that it was quite elegant and had a partially blue facade.

On the To be done list is HMS Monck, because it has a rather confusing history thanks to changes in its location and function. It was variously located in Largs, Port Glasgow and Roseneath, but extracting the detail without a mountain of books handy is not the best of ideas.

There was HMS Warren, a Senior Officers training centre for Combined Operations for all three services.  This was No 4 Combined Training Centre or CTC Largs between 12/10/42 and 31/12/46. HMS Warren included the Hollywood Hotel in Largs.

There was an RAF base within CTC Largs, called RAF Vanduara which came under Wing Commander Carroll in 1943,. The training centre was also the HQ of Rear Admiral Combined Operations Base (WA) and the Flag Officer commanding overseas assault forces.

Vanduara reportedly came from the Vanduara Hotel, Largs, a two storey building once situated at the north end of the grassed area of sea front opposite the Barrfields area, now a block of flats. During the early part of the war the hotel was the  original base of the newly formed Combined Operations under the command of Admiral Keyes who was succeeded there by Mountbatten.

HMS Quebec was the best known CTC and HQ at Inveraray, but there was also HMS Quebec II which was mainly administrative. This was located in the Hollywood Hotel, Largs, between 11/10/41 and 31/3/43. It had been the HQ of Rear Admiral Commanding Northern Patrol and a Naval Hospital. It became HQ of Joint Air Ministry and Naval staff and Flag of the Commandant, Combined Training Centre, Inveraray (HMS Quebec). Re-designated HMS Quebec II on 10/3/42 as Vice Admiral Combined Training.

Haven't come across any pics, and I don't just mean of the wartime bases, being a hotel in a holiday location, you'd think it might appear in Clyde coast books, but not in any in my library to date.

This is probably a good example of the sort of history that can drive you up the wall when summarising the past of a life of a requisitioned building or site, as the one site may have hosted a number of establishments at different times, leading to a terribly confusing story when trying to summarise any single aspect - but it does help the sales of caffeine and straight-jackets!

Wow! Now there's a trove of historical items! Thanks for all the information Apollo... I found it very interesting. The reason I recall this building had nothing whatever to do with the war. During the war the entrance to the hotel was the turning point for the West of Scotland's 50 mile bicycle race, and i assisted my father as a marshall right at the entrance to the Hollywood.

Every little helps when trying to remember these things.

I should add I claim no originality for any of this information, but with CTC Inveraray lying somewhere I happen to know/like, and the loss of the museum coming as something of a shock when I tried to revisit it, the result is I seem to fairly well informed with the places that hold any relevant info, and anything can set me off on the hunt foe current or new info.

There are no details at the moment, but we understand the curator and locals at Inveraray will soon have a new, online research resource relating to CTC Inveraray and Combined Ops, so hope we can pass on that info when it appears.

Turning back to "The Winch",  can picture it as a winch hauling something onto and/or up the beach, but the 'correction of mistakes' option escapes me somewhat, and begs some clarification.

Anyone that's had the misfortune to use a winch fixed in the way that this one isl appreciate the problem raised by "off axis" operation. If the subject being winched in is not in line with the rewind, and the cable is pulled any more than a few degrees to the side, then the all sorts of nasties arise. The cable binds on the sides if the drum and wants to clump on that side instead of layering, and the winch itself tries to twist to line up with with the direction of tow - OH! maybe that's why it's broken like it is!

That hadn't occurred to me, as the real point I was intending to make was simply that this single winch would only have been able to winch craft that happened to land a few degrees of its centre, so would have been of little use elsewhere. Perhaps a number of these winches were strategically placed along the length of the beach, and evidence of their fixings might now be found in the concrete, if one knew what one was looking for.

To have been any use for the given purpose, there would need to have been a few more located along the beach, which might also make more sense from the point of view of use, as having only one could mean that it might take forever to clear a few 'mistakes'.

I had assumed that the important part of the training here was for the troops/ tanks etc rather than the ships so mistakes on the latters' part could be rectified.  There may have been only the one winch allied to some kind of moveable pulley system to give better allignment.  I'll try and have a look sometime but Wemyss Bay is the worst place in the west of Scotland to find a parking space in and the road beside the concrete beach is a private road and they do not even like people driving along it let alone parking.

It also occurs to me that somewhere there is a reminiscence about the LCTs grounding on a reef off of the shore and having to be assisted.  I think it was on the Wemyss Bay website.

That would be some pulley, given the weight of the vehicle or landing craft involved. It would need to be stayed or ground mounted, and subject to the same, or even greater due to being off-axis, forces as the winch. I had dismissed the option as impractical, hence suggesting a few more base fixings might be there to be found.

I've heard talk of this "Private Road" rubbish before, but have been told that if a road appears on public and council maps then it is a public road which anyone is free to use, regardless of what privileges a few residents believe they have bought along with their nice houses.

We've got a few around us that the homeowners have stuck signs on, but where they are means that they're not any sort of issue, so there have never (to my knowledge) been any incidents to test them. None of them have nice scenery, and they're generally dead-ends with expensive houses at the end, so nobody has much of a reason to got there anyway.

I imagine the local council offices would the place to find the answer, if anyone cared

I'm afraid I'd prefer just to arrive and play ignorant, and put Mr & Mrs We're Better Than You to the bother of chasing me, even if it was private.

Come to think of it, the Scottish Open Access Code and the changes that the Land Reform Act (2003) brought might actually affect this sort of thing, as I recall someone mentioning legitimate car parking within a certain distance of the public road. Afraid I never followed the detail, as I've never had a problem so never needed to know the detail.

It might depend on who is responsible for the upkeep of the surface!

Since you mentioned HMS Monck a contact in the Port suggested that the site of the barracks might have been:- (:gma-point lat=55.9345451 lon=-4.6884263 .  Apparently this grassy area was known as the parade ground years ago although the ference might have been to Orange Lodge parades so is not definite.

Photogallery now added to the webpage.

I was rather surprised to find that the winch has been recently repaired.  There are new bolts on one side of it.  The suggestion of it being used to correect landing errors by LSTs seems unlikely as it currently does not face the concrete beach and I could find no trace of any other fixings in the remaining concrete which is in poor condition.  I think there may have been a slipway for small boats there.  Further investigation when the tide is out needs to be carried out.

That is a surprise, maybe somebody has a 'soft spot' for it and is trying to prevent it being lost completely. Being on the sea shore can't be doing anything for the old metalwork's longevity.

I think the LST was always a long shot anyway, but because it was only a single item in a fixed location.

A slipway and single purpose would be more reasonable.

I just zoomed in while editing the pics, and I have to say that this has made the purpose of the winch fairly obvious - well, I think so, now, anyway...

I see it lies at the foot of the concrete ramp accessing the beach.

Seem fairly certain that it would have simply have been used to aid craft from the sea to the ramp. I don't mean LCT (which aren't amphibious and stay in the water), but amphibious vehicles that may be intended to transition between land and sea, but don't always work as planned. Underpowered or unable to gain a footing, they can get stuck in the water without too much effort, and need a bit of a hand to get out. That base would be just a nice size for winch that would give amphibious vehicle a helping hand if they weren't quite able to pull themselves out of the sea and onto the land.

Wet tyres, bit of spilled diesel, rocks, gravel, sand etc can all beat amphibians, and the engines in those days didn't have the power we take for granted in military jobs today. Back then, power = weight, and that was bad news in such vehicles.

And then there's you're own thought on the spot being used as slipway, and the winch simply helped small boats that might have been in use by observers (of exercises) and by support personnel.

Have you perused this  one?
http://www.wemyssbay.net/images/railbridgeview.jpg

View from an old postcard bought circa 1953.  It seems to show the concrete beach running much further down the beach towards the water than it does now BUT it also seems to show that it didn't go as far across the beach as it does now.

Hmmm......

I suspect the view predates World War II and the concrete