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Lippitts Hill

Epping Forest DistrictHistory of the Metropolitan PoliceLandforms of EssexMountains and hills of EnglandUse British English from May 2019
World War II prisoner of war camps in England
Lippitts Hill (geograph 2099848)
Lippitts Hill (geograph 2099848)

Lippitts Hill is a hill located at High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex. It has played several historic roles in the defence and policing of London. The hill was the site of a gun emplacement in the First World War and used as an anti-aircraft site in the Second World War. The United States's 184th anti-aircraft artillery installed their own guns in 1941, and added an underground control room and block houses to the site. A prisoner of war camp was established at Lippitts Hill by the British after the camp was abandoned by the Americans in 1944. Relics from the Second World War at the camp include a memorial to the American forces that served there, and a concrete sculpture of a man, left by a German prisoner of war, Rudi Webber. The local branch of the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist organisation, would invite local prisoners of war from the camp to their homes on Christmas Day.The hill was the location of the bodies in the Babes in the Wood murders in 1970.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Lippitts Hill (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Lippitts Hill
Lippitts Hill, Epping Forest Waltham Abbey

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N 51.6545 ° E 0.0177 °
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Lippitts Hill

Lippitts Hill
IG10 4AL Epping Forest, Waltham Abbey
England, United Kingdom
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Lippitts Hill (geograph 2099848)
Lippitts Hill (geograph 2099848)
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Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit
Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit

The Air Support Unit (ASU) was a Central Operations branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service. The main responsibility of the unit was to provide aerial reconnaissance and other air support operations. Helicopters are particularly useful in aiding searches for missing persons, car pursuits, suspect capture and large public order operations such as football matches. The ASU also supported other emergency services, including the London Fire Brigade, London Ambulance Service and Marine Coastguard. On 31 March 2015, the National Police Air Service took over providing air support to the Metropolitan Police Service (along with all other police forces in England and Wales). This resulted in the closure of the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit. The Metropolitan Police Service has also reportedly been secretly using Cessna aircraft for a number of years that have been fitted with surveillance equipment capable of intercepting mobile phone calls and listening in on conversations.Formed in 1980, the unit was based at Lippitts Hill, Essex and had 48 personnel comprising 3 sergeants, 18 constables, 4 aircraft engineers, 1 avionics engineer, 11 pilots and was headed by an inspector. The unit also employed other members of staff, including operations room staff and an intelligence officer. The senior management were based at Wapping police station. All pilots were ex-military Royal Navy but also Army Air Corps. Each aircraft was crewed by a pilot with two officers acting as observers, and averaged over 260 flying hours per month.In 1980, the ASU started with Bell 222A helicopters and in 1993 transitioned to Eurocopter AS355N Squirrel helicopters.In July 2007, the ASU took delivery of three new Eurocopter EC145s costing a total of £15 million, using the call signs India 97, India 98 and India 99. Each aircraft has an L-3 Wescam MX-15 sensor pod which houses a gyro-stabilised colour "day" camera and a thermal imaging camera with digital video downlink from the helicopter.In February 2015, it was announced that the control of the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit was to be transferred to the National Police Air Service (NPAS) on 31 March, and that the base at Lippitts Hill would close in the following year. A projected new base at Elstree was intended to serve Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Essex as well as London. However, by February 2017, a replacement for the Lippitts Hill base had not been procured, and the possibility of using RAF Northolt instead was being investigated.On 7 September 2017 it was provisionally agreed by Epping Forest District Council to allow the unit to operate three helicopters and one fixed wing aircraft from North Weald Airfield in Essex, with a 25-year lease.

Turpin's Cave
Turpin's Cave

Turpin's Cave is an area of Epping Forest in Essex which has been attributed as a hiding place of the highwayman Dick Turpin. Dick Turpin knew Epping Forest well and organised many criminal activities from a base between the Loughton Road and Kings Oak Road, which in legend became known as 'Turpin's cave'. After an incident in May 1737, Turpin escaped to Epping Forest, where he hid (according to accounts "in a cave"). He was seen by Thomas Morris, a servant of one of the Forest's keepers close to what is now 'The Robin Hood' pub. Morris armed with pistols, attempted to capture Turpin on the 4th of May; Turpin however shot and killed him with a carbine. The murder was reported in The Gentleman's Magazine The terrain in most of Epping Forest comprises Bagshot Beds, which are sand and gravel and not solid enough to provide habitable caves such as the one illustrated. Though several locations for Turpin's hiding place were suggested, legend attributed it to a site off Wellington Hill at High Beach. D'Oyley, the Loughton surveyor, who drew up the maps for the Epping Forest Commission in the 19th century marked the area to the north of Loughton Camp as Dick Turpin's Cave and the name was applied to a pub at that location B H Cowper, who excavated Loughton Camp in the 1870s referred to maps identifying Turpin's cave within the camp, but found no evidence of a cave there. However an identifiable dug-out was visible in the 19th century as in 1883 John Croumbie Brown wrote "Turpin's Cave is as much one of the exhibitions of Epping Forest as Turpin's Oak is of Finchley Common, and who shall begrudge to the admirers of each, in these unromantic and prosaic days, the indulgence of their tastes".The Turpin's Inn pub dates from some time in the 19th century as it was visited by John Davidson in 1893 who complains in his "Random Itinerary" of being made to pay a deposit for the drinking pot there. A housing development has since been built over the pub but next to it was a fenced-off dug-out in the clay and gravel soil described as Turpin's Cave, all or part of which was visible when the photograph was taken in the 1960s. The site in Epping Forest is not the only one with the name Turpin's Cave. There is a "Turpin's Cave" at the edge of Bostall Woods in Plumstead Another site known as Dick Turpin’s Cave is at Rammamere Heath near Heath and Reach, Bedfordshire .