Southwick House command post park put up for sale

Southwick House command post park put up for sale

Southwick House, Portsmouth, Royaume-Uni

10 September 2016: Southwick House Command Post Park put up for sale
Author: Marc Laurenceau

The UK Ministry of Defence is now offering thirteen historic sites for sale as part of a project to reduce the number of facilities it currently owns. The ultimate aim is to reduce its building stock by 30% by 2040 in order to cut maintenance costs. Among the sites up for sale is Southwick House Park. The land on which this superb property dating from 1800 is situated is close to Portsmouth.

In 1940, the owners granted the British Navy (Royal Navy) the right to use the rooms for the benefit of students from the Royal Navy School of Navigation, who embarked on board HMS Dryad. In 1941, after severe bombing raids on the Portsmouth shipyard, many of the sailors’ accommodation units were destroyed: the Royal Navy requisitioned Southwick House to house all the personnel of HMS Dryad. In 1943, this building with its large rooms, ideal for staff purposes, was chosen to serve as the forward command post for SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), the supreme command of the Allied Expeditionary Forces led by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1944, Soutwhick House became SHAEF headquarters. During D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, one of the rooms was used to display a large wooden map of southern England, the English Channel and the north of France. This wall map is still in place today, depicting Operation Neptune on 6 June 1944.

The Operations Room at Southwick House, where the reconstructed wall map of operations on 6 June 1944 can still be seen.

For the record, the two English workers responsible for installing the map had been commissioned to install a wall map depicting the western front of Europe, from the coast of Norway to the Spanish Basque country. But once there, the order became clearer: the map had to show the coastline of north-west France, thus clarifying the objectives of Operation Overlord. For obvious security reasons, the two workers were placed under house arrest at Southwick House until the launch of the operation on 6 June 1944.

2016 news of the Normandy landing beaches