Interior. Canteen block. View of dining room showing detail of thatched cottage mural

Description Interior. Canteen block. View of dining room showing detail of thatched cottage mural

Date 6/6/1996

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

Catalogue Number D 3115 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 446615

Scope and Content Mural painting, World War II mess hall, canteen block, Ness Battery, Stromness, Mainland, Orkney Islands In both World Wars coast batteries were built to protect the channels into Scapa Flow and Kirkwall Bay, where there was an important contraband control. The greatest concentrations of firepower were at the main southern and north-western entrances to the Flow, the latter covered by a series of coast batteries centred, in World War II, on Ness Battery at Stromness. The timber-lined walls of the mess hall within the canteen block at Ness Battery are brightly decorated with a mural oil-based painting which depicts various scenes of rural life and is signed by one A P Woods. In this section, the serving hatches from the adjacent kitchen are disguised as large ground-floor windows in this thatched cottage which, with its mullioned windows, timber-framed panels and 'eyebrow' dormer windows is an amalgam of distinctly English rural vernacular styles. 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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