General view of wooden huts from South East

Description General view of wooden huts from South East

Catalogue Number SC 670760

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 73100 CN

Scope and Content World War II accommodation huts, 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. In this view of the wartime accommodation huts associated with Ness Battery, the group of smaller units on the left-hand side make up the officers' quarters, while the large double-gabled hut on the right was the canteen block, the right-hand or rear unit serving as the kitchen and the front or left-hand section forming the mess hall or dining room. The huts are uniformly of timber weatherboarded construction with shuttered windows and gabled, zinc-covered roofs. 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.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/670760

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap