View to SE of battery from Martello tower

Description View to SE of battery from Martello tower

Date 22/5/1996

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

Catalogue Number C 73252 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 672752

Scope and Content Hackness Battery and Crockness Martello Tower, South Walls, Hoy, Orkney Islands Recognition of the strategic importance of Scapa Flow grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when it was realised that the greatest challenge to British naval supremacy was no longer France but Germany. However, prior to 1914, the government's only significant investment in military architecture in this area was in 1813-15 when coastal defences were built at the entrance to Long Hope. This sheltered inlet, which opens off the south-west corner of Scapa Flow, then served as an assembly-point and anchorage for convoys of sailing ships on the long north-about route around Britain avoiding the English Channel. Designed to provide protection from French and American privateers, the defences were completed only after peace with America had been concluded and shortly before the final collapse of Napoleonic France in 1815. They consisted of a gun battery at Hackness and two cylindrical gun towers known as Martello Towers, one at Hackness and the other at Crockness. Based on the design of a coastal tower at Mortella Point in Corsica which had so impressed the Royal Navy with its robust defensive capabilities in 1794, Martello Towers were built in some numbers on the English south coast, but only one other was erected in Scotland, at Leith Harbour. This is a view across Long Hope taken from the top of Hackness Martello Tower, showing, in the foreground, Hackness Battery, in the middle distance, Crockness Martello Tower and (left) part of the Lyness Naval Base and, on the far headland, Rysa Lodge. The buildings to the right of the entrance to the battery were the officers' quarters with the soldier barracks behind; to the left of the entrance is the guard room with the cookhouse, stores and ablutions beyond. Part of the gun emplacements are visible on the right. The battery was originally equipped with eight 24-pounder guns which were emplaced to fire over the parapet. In 1866 the possibility of war with France or Russia, provoked by trouble in Ireland, led to a re-equipping and remodelling of the battery for use with four larger 68-pounder guns to be fired through embrasures in the curtain wall. 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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