Note
Date 23 July 2013
Event ID 962777
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/962777
Two gun houses, each with a magazine and crew shelters. The north gun house (no. 2 gun) adapted and used the First World War magazine and lies immediately to the N of the First World War 9.2-inch emplacement. A new shaft for a hoist was made in the N wall of the magazine allowing direct access into the new gun house. The doorway and windows providing light into the shell store may have been blocked at this time. The arrangement within the magazine may have been changed but there is currently no safe access to check. The original hoist shaft became an emergency exit with a covered hatch.
In front of the gun pit the concrete apron has small boulders placed into it for camouflage and similarly on the part of the roof. A crew shelter, officer's room and gun store lie attached to the N side of the gun house. When operational the rear of the gun houses was covered in camouflage netting. The access road to the rear was painted with a camouflage pattern as visible of a vertical aerial photograph (106G/UK/751, 6035-6037, flown 31 August 1945).
The south gun house (No. 1 gun) was a completely new build. The arrangement is similar to the N gun house, however the magazine was of an improved designed and identical to that at the Ness Battery in Orkney (see HY20NW 27). The access to the magazine was by a flight of stairs. Shells and cordite were delivered down into the magazine using a small crane, still in situ, above the bottom of the stairs. A L-shaped passageway runs to the steel doors of the magazine. At right angles to and on either side of the steel entrance doorways is a low narrow passageway which extends around the outside of the magazine. This feature allowed any blast wave for an external explosion to safely disperse. The magazine contained two rooms parallel to each other, with the hoist in what was the shell room in the NW corner which lead up to the SW corner of the gun house. Finally an emergency exit was provided in the W wall which leads to a covered hatch to the SW of the gun house.
Attached to the N side of the gun house was the crew shelter and officers room.
The battery, according to the Fort Record Book (The National Archives WO 192/248) was constructed during 1939 and the guns were operational on the 11th November 1939.
Information from RCAHMS (AKK) 23 July 2013.
