Pillbox, angled over due to coastal erosion: visible on air photographs AAS/93/15/G30/23-4, flown 11 November 1993. Copies held by Grampian Regional Council. NMRS, MS/712/6. Newburgh Sands, pill-box. Air photographs: AAS/97/04/G8/1-2 and AAS/. 97/04/CT. NMRS, MS/712/29. A hexagonal pillbox is exposed within a break in the dunes above the high water mark, about 200m NNE of the terminus of the trackway that leads towards the farm-buildings at Drums steading (NJ92SE 40).
The pill-box, which is of Wills (1985) type 24 faces towards the sea and the entrance is at the centre of the long rear wall on the W. The other five walls are each pierced by a single embrasure. The interior measures 5. 15m from N to S by 4. 7m transversely and 2m in height, and the walls are 0.
38m thick. There is no anti-ricochet wall, but a concrete shelf 1. 1m wide and 0. 9m high, supported on a series of brick columns, extends around all sides except the rear. The grain on the surface of the concrete from which it has been fabricated indicates that it was built with the aid of timber shuttering, and the whole structure is founded upon a concrete raft 0.
5m thick. This is anchored by four large rectangular piles, which, although now entirely exposed through wind erosion, were originally buried deep in the sand. That on the SW still retains remnants of the original timber shuttering adhering to its face. A short line of anti-tank obstacles, made up of cylindrical and rectangular concrete blocks running parallel with the tide-line, is partly buried on the sandy beach immediately to the E of the pillbox.
The more southerly blocks are now embedded within the encroaching sand cliff and it is not clear whether these link with the isolated length lying further to the SSW (NJ 9969 2208) , - so providing a continuous defence along the foot of the steeply rising dunes. Visited by RCAHMS (ATW, JRS) , 31 January 1997.