Archaeology Notes

Event ID 797982

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/797982

ND34NE 28 centred 3735 4970

This heavy anti-aircraft battery was situated at the SW end of a row of houses on Hill of Man. Nothing survives of this battery in an area which has now been made into a cycle track across several small mounds.

The battery was armed with two 3-inch guns.

J Guy 2000; NMRS MS 810/10, Vol.1, 37

This heavy anti-aircraft battery is visible on WW II vertical air photographs (NLA 16, 666-667, flown 22 June 1941 in an area SE of Wick known as Hill of Man. The postwar RAF vertical air photographs also show the gun battery, though the two emplacements have already been partly demolished and the hutted camp removed.

Clearly visible on the 1941 photographs are the two gun-emplacements (ND 3735 4970 with a small command bunker to the W. The accommodation camp is about 150m to the NW (centred ND 3730 4980) and consisted of about fifteen Nissen huts.

The site has been cleared and a row of 'Coastguard houses' now occupies part of the where the battery once stood and a disturbed area at the SE end of the Coastguard cottages may signify the location of the emplacements.

Visited by RCAHMS (DE), August 2000