Anglo-Boer War Blockhouses - The Essential Guide

By Simon C Green

The Essentials Guide is a companion to Anglo-Boer War Blockhouses - A Military Engineer's Perspective (Edition 2), and a slimmed down version of the original Limited Edition Field Guide. It remains the only extensive review of the blockhouses left standing in South Africa and updated with the status of many falling into decline. A first-of-its-kind guide, it can be used for virtual visits to learn more about these military structures, or better still to get 'boots on the ground'. The aim is to put the blockhouse sites on the battlefield tourism map and to encourage professional guides and amateurs alike to explore them in detail or make them a stop-off on a longer trip. Keep one in the car maybe?Built 120 years ago, these temporary structures were occupied for only 2-years by the lonely and bored 'Tommy Atkins' but have a story to tell, of military industrial proportions. The author visited virtually every site, excepting only a few whose isolation and inaccessibility speak volumes about the challenges offered by the South African veld to the combatants.The guide also acts as a record of the current condition of the sites, and all have been ravaged by human destruction and the inexorable effects of weather and the passage of time. Around thirty of them are protected by government legislation which, to date, has proved ineffective as saving them. One day this guide may be the sole source of reference to an aspect of our national heritage that we are in danger of failing to preserve.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1037097491
• ISBN13: 9781037097492
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Blockhouse Books
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"