Orkney, St Mary's, Skaildaquoy Point, 19th Century Battery
Battery (19th Century)
Site Name Orkney, St Mary's, Skaildaquoy Point, 19th Century Battery
Classification Battery (19th Century)
Canmore ID 291182
Site Number HY40SE 71
NGR HY 47202 00663
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/291182
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Holm
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
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.
