Ship spotters tracking one of the busiest harbour entrances in the country could be watching real time radar readouts from a new visitors centre at a historic defence site in Harwich, if plans are granted.

Paul Valentine who bought the Beacon Hill Fort in 2018 envisages equipping the tourist centre he wants to build next door to allow ship spotters to track shipping traffic on radar screens at the same time as being able to view them through binoculars.

The historic site, which has been used as a defence against naval threats since the Tudors, sits on the edge of Harwich harbour where yachts and ships from Shotley and Felixstowe also sail in and out to sea.

Picture: Paul Valentine/LinkedIn)

Mr Valentine also envisages the centre to accommodate visitors wanting to learn more about the huge Galloper Offshore Wind Farm and the proposed Five Estuaries wind farm extension as well as a centre for the historic coastal battery. He also wants to install a telescope that users from across the globe can access remotely.

He said: "The whole point of having a tourist centre there is not just the fort. The harbour authorities get a lot of people on the promenade ship spotting. People come to spot the container ships cruise liners and ferries.

"What I imagine is someone could sit down and have a coffee and all the screens will be around you tracking the ships. So many people park up there anyway to look through binoculars at the ships."

The site, that has been scrubland for decades, had been used to provide access to the many buildings and defensive structures that comprised the Beacon Hill Battery – a late 19th and 20th century coastal fortification that was built to defend the port of Harwich.

The promontory was seen as a suitable place to construct defences from invading naval forces back in history to Tudor times though the defences developed between the 16th and 19th centuries have now largely gone.

It was during the First World War that more serious attempts to provide defences were constructed and Beacon Hill is thought to be the first battery to employ guns mounted on carriages which would rise to fire and then disappear down into their pits.

However, redevelopment of the site designated scheduled ancient monument was again undertaken during the early period of the Second World War.

In April 1941, a hexagonal tower was built 100 yards north of Beacon Hill to house one of the earliest applications of Radio Direction Finding – later better known as Radar – to monitor the minefield installed between Beacon Hill and Landguard Point and detect German Navy vessels as they entered the estuary.

Mr Valentine added: "The site was all very top secret in its day hence that is why that hooked me into wanting to join it with the modern stuff of today – the technology seeing the boats come in on radar, the science of wind turbines."