Archaeology Notes

Event ID 644978

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/644978

HY40SE 13.00 centred 48653 00163

HY40SE 13.01 HY 48634 00077 and HY 48601 00069 Searchlight Battery

This coast battery is situated on the S side of Lamb Holm Island. It consists of one 12 pounder emplacement with a second gun mounted in an open emplacement, so that it had a 360 degree traverse which has now been removed. Placed on a care and maintainance basis in 1943.

J Guy 1993; NMRS MS 810/2.

One brick and concrete gun-emplacement, observation post, magazine and the engine house are all that survives of Lamb Holm coast battery situated in the centre of a grass field which now comprises the SW quadrant of the airstrip (HY40SE 57).

A second open emplacement was constructed about 17m NE of the surviving one, but this has now been demolished.

The battery was armed with two 12-pounder guns, one of which had been removed from Scad Head Battery (HY20SE 2.00) (PRO WO 199/2627).

Two searchlight platforms (HY 48634 00077 and HY 48601 00069) are still extant at the top of the coastal slope to the E of Kirk Point.

The magazine lies at HY 486596 00212 and the battery observation post at HY 48617 00163.

The battery is visible on RAF vertical air photographs (106G/Scot/UK 137, 3014-3015, flown 3 July 1946), which shows both gun-emplacements extant at each side of a track, which led from the Churchill Barrier to the site.

The guns were removed during December 1943 (WO 192/114).

Visited by RCAHMS (GS), August 1997