World War One Audit of Surviving Remains

Date 1 July 2013

Event ID 961910

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type World War One Audit of Surviving Remains

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/961910

World War One Audit of Surviving Remains

This coast artillery battery was one of five used during the First World War to defend the important port and ship-building centre on the Clyde. Accounts differ as to when, during the first decade of the 20th century, work had begun to remodel the existing battery to mount two 4.7-inch QF guns. QF guns were intended to tackle smaller, faster-moving attacking vessels. They achieved their high rates of fire (5-6 rounds a minute, firing a 20kg projectile) because the propellant and the explosive shell were contained within a single piece, rather than for larger guns, whose propellant and shell were loaded separately. The battery was also equipped with two .303 calibre Hotchkiss machine guns, mounted to the east and west of the main armament.

A War Department record plan of the battery, dated 1906, states that work had begun on the battery on 17 March 1902, and had been completed by 31 December 1905, at a cost £4623 (almost £0.5M at 2013 values), the guns apparently having been mounted in July 1905. The record drawings show the gun emplacements, magazines, barracks, offices and domestic buildings in detail. The top of the magazine was protected by 5ft 4in of concrete with 3ft 6in sand and 6in fine earth above.

The Fortress Record Book records that the pair of guns installed in 1905 was replaced in 1912, and in 1913 shelters were built for the gunners on the battery.

There were two Defence Electric Lights (large searchlights) at Fort Matilda, which were to illuminate targets on the river at night.

The wartime garrison of the fort numbered about 200: there were about 130 artillerymen and officers; 10 Royal Engineers and 52 Electrical Engineers, mainly to man and maintain the searchlights. About 160 men (and the wives of many) could be accommodated within the fort.

There was also a full battalion of infantry (over 1000 officers and men) to defend the battery, accommodated in camps nearby. These men both guarded the fort and its immediate environs, and defended Lyle Hill (NS27NE 40.02-4), which dominated the fort from the south. Lyle Hill was also the site of one of the battery’s two anti-aircraft guns (see NS27NE 40.01) (and an AA searchlight), the other was within the Fort. War Office maps dated 1916 show the locations of the defences of the battery, including Lyles Hill. The defences on Lyle Hill were very strong: A system of trenches, linking three blockhouses (pillboxes) surrounded the summit. with an apron of barbed about 100m in front of it. Machine guns were placed on the east and west sides, and the anti-aircraft gun at the northernmost end of the complex. Further defences were built to the south-west and west of Fort Matilda, and the torpedo factory immediately to the west of the Fort.

The fort had two anti-aircraft guns, one on Lyle Hill and one marked on a plan on file WO 78/4396, on the Esplanade, just to the east of the fort.

The two 4.7-inch guns were removed in February 1917, to be used to arm merchant ships, and the battery was decommissioned. The battery’s searchlights remained in position, although mainly for training, until about 1937. Nothing now survives of the battery or the defences on Lyles Hill.

Information from HS/RCAHMS World War One Audit Project (GJB) 1 July 2013.