Archaeology Notes

Event ID 855577

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/855577

HY40SE 71 47202 00663

The remains of a 19th century gun battery are situated on the SW part of Skaildaquoy Point.

The battery is depicted on the 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Orkney 1902, sheet cxiv), but not on the First Edition of 1881, and shows a hexagon shaped enclosure around two mounds and what is probably two gun emplacements (shown by pecked lines), with a narrow rectangular roofed building about 15m to the E. The hexagon is annotated 'FS' for flagstaff.

At HY 47237 00707 about 60m NE is a second square roofed building, possibly the magazine.

The remains are visible on a RAF WW II vertical air photograph (WL/10, 1.24, flown 4 July 1942) and more recent aerial photography taken in 1975 and 1988 (Fairey Surveys Ltd/SDD, 44 427-428, flown 6 June 1975 and All Scotland Survey, 21 87 068-070, flown 29 September 1987), both of which show that the battery survives as mounds, a roofless building and the magazine building. A later structure is extant about 34m ENE from the battery (HY 47233 00670). The current OS 1:2500 scale digital map depicts the magazine and a horse shoe shaped sysmbol for the battery.

Information from RCAHMS (DE), November 2007.