fascinating
wartime heritage
The beautiful beaches, windswept dunes and rolling countryside around Saunton Sands Hotel hide a fascinating wartime heritage, which forever bonds north Devon with North America.
Saunton Sands Hotel was opened in 1933 by the developer Sir John Christie, who also built the Glyndebourne opera house. Perched above a stunning three-mile beach and served by the Ilfracombe railway line running through Braunton, the beautiful art deco hotel was perfectly poised to capture the burgeoning influx of British tourists who had discovered the delights of Devon.
The hotel remained popular
The hotel remained popular until the outbreak of the second world war when, in 1940, it was requisitioned to house the children of the Duke of York’s Military School. The pupils from the all-boys boarding school were evacuated to Devon from Kent until 1946. During the war, German bombers were believed to have used the hotel building as a landmark on their route to Cardiff, so it was painted green to obscure it from view. Yet if the hotel played a part in the wartime effort, it was nothing compared to the role of the beach.
The legacy of the US Army remains...
In 1943, the British Government offered Saunton Sands, Braunton Burrows and Woolacombe Beach to the US Army in order for them to use as the site for its Assault Training Centre (ATC), to prepare around 10,000 troops for the Normandy Landings in France. The topography and tides of these beaches were just like those of northern France, making the area ideal for amphibious training exercises. US troops trained on these sites right up until the D-Day landings in 1944. You can see original footage of them practising on Braunton Burrows here.
Brigadier General Paul W Thompson, who led the training, is quoted as saying: ‘If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, surely the sands of north Devon beaches contributed importantly to the success of the assault over the Normandy beaches.’
The legacy of the US Army remains throughout the area, with a memorial, practise pillboxes, concrete replica landing craft and bullet-scarred blast walls all nestled among the dunes of Braunton Burrows. There is even a local lane called the ‘American Road’. Visitors can follow in the sandy footsteps of the soldiers on a series of spectacular and evocative coastal walks, which are easily accessible from Saunton Sands Hotel.
