Braefoot Point Battery, Blockhouse No.3 (Outer Ring)

Recorded in error as a AA position or searchlight.

The concrete base is for a former First World War pillbox or blockhouse, which is depicted and annotated on a War Office map dated 1916 (The National Archives WO 78/4396). It was one of at least six blockhouses surrounding the perimiter of the Braefoot Battery (See NT18SE 25.00). For an upstanding example of a blockhouse at this site see NT18SE 25.09.

Information from RCAHMS (AKK) 14 August 2013.

A project to characterise the quantity and quality of the Scottish resource of known surviving remains of the First World War. Carried out in partnership between Historic Scotland and RCAHMS.

This pillbox (referred to as a blockhouse on a 1918 OS plan), which was one of six in an outer ring of such structures that defended the Braefoot Point gun battery in World War One, has been demolished. Its shattered remains, left in situ after being blown apart, are situated low down just above the foreshore overlooking Braefoot Bay. The roof has measured 0.15m in thickness and the concrete walls 0.3m; the walls and floors have collapsed on to the concrete raft floor (at least 0.45m thick) which has been set into the natural slope on the NW and appears to be intact. The contemporary plan (Ordnance Survey 1918) shows that the pillbox was irregular on plan with longish sides on the NE and NW, but with five much shorter facets of varying length taking in an arc running from the W round the S side to the E. A fragment of wall contains an embrasure measuring 1.68m in width by 0.37m in height. No trace was found on the date of visit of the small building, probably a latrine, which stood about 14m NE of the pillbox.

Visited by HES Archaeological Survey (J. Sherriff, A. McCaig), 8 August 2022.

Ordnance Survey 1918. 1:360 scale plan of Special Survey War Department Site at Braefoot Point, Fifeshire - NLS: MapArea.C18:13(05).