Blyth Battery Volunteers Receive the King's Award for Voluntary Service

The team who keep Blyth Battery open, tidy and telling its story have received the highest honour a voluntary group in the UK can be given. Around 40 volunteers were presented with the King's Award for Voluntary Service — often described as the group equivalent of an MBE — by the Lord-Lieutenant of Northumberland, Dr Caroline Pryer.

Blyth Battery is the restored coastal-defence installation on South Beach, built to guard the harbour and its wartime submarine base. Work on the site began during the First World War, and it was re-armed and back in service through the Second World War, its gun emplacements and buildings still standing among the dunes today.

Kept alive by volunteers

The battery is a free, volunteer-run museum, and it exists in its current form because of the people who give their time to it. Volunteers open the site to the public, lead guided tours, support school visits and run events through the year — most visibly the annual "Blyth Battery Goes to War" weekend, which brings the site's wartime history to life.

Best for:

Blyth Battery is free to visit and open at weekends from spring to early autumn. It is one of the town's most rewarding days out, and the perfect follow-up after reading about the volunteers behind it.

A well-earned recognition

The King's Award recognises outstanding work by volunteer groups that make a real difference in their communities. For Blyth, it is national recognition of a small army of local people who have preserved a piece of the town's — and the country's — coastal-defence heritage, and made it something families can walk into for free.

The volunteers celebrated together at a weekend tea party, commemorative lapel badges pinned on. Further details are reported by the Northumberland Gazette.

---

Photograph of Blyth Battery by Geoff Holland, Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Have a story? Get in touch.