Air-raid shelter, view of entrance with signal station in background from North.

Description Air-raid shelter, view of entrance with signal station in background from North.

Date 23/5/1997

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number D 21611 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 670077

Scope and Content Air raid shelter, World War II signal station, Stanger Head, Flotta, Orkney Islands In World War II military activities in and around Scapa Flow generated a complex communications network of wireless, cabled and manual signals equipment associated with all three armed services. These ranged from traditional methods of intelligence-gathering, monitoring and signalling, as practised in World War I, to the sophisticated systems of detection and communication which developments in radio and radar offered. The Royal Navy possessed its own radar network (known as AES, Admiralty Experimental Stations) with at least one station in Orkney, on Ward Hill in South Ronaldsay, but its land-based communications operated mainly through a local group of Port War Signal Stations at Stromness (Ness Battery), Kirkwall (Rerwick Head), Lyness and here at Stanger Head on Flotta, where this range of brick buildings, grouped around a four-storeyed tower, replaced a World War I signal station which had stood on the western side of the island, centred upon an equally lofty but timber-built tower designed in the manner of a ship's superstructure, complete with bridge. This is the end entrance to an air-raid shelter which stands close to the signal station and watch tower. The entrance has rubble-built masonry jambs and a concrete lintel, and the structure, which is a surface shelter, entirely above ground, has the usual earth- and turf-banked blast-proof covering. Unlike civilian shelters which were equipped with latrines, military shelters such as this were designed only for temporary use during an attack. The signal station, which remains a prominent landmark throughout the South Isles of Orkney, would have been a conspicuous target for aerial attack, but clearly, neither it nor the shelter suffered any wartime damage. At the heart of the Orkney archipelago, Scapa Flow was the main fleet anchorage for the Royal Navy during both World Wars. Its vital importance led to the creation of one of the most concentrated defence networks in Britain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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