Toward Battery

This air-raid shelter is situated within the NW corner of the accommodation compound at Toward Battery, some 30m down the slope from the main water supply tanks (NS16NW 16.28). It takes the form of a trench at least 21m in length by up to 1.5m in breadth and now no more than 0.6m in depth, which runs obliquely down slope from NE to SW. At irregular intervals along the NW side of the trench there are four side-trenches, all no more than 3.5m in length, and there is a longer (6m) offshoot at the NE end. Three breaks in the SE wall of the trench may indicate the locations of original entrances. There may also have been an entrance to the trench at its SW end where there is a drain leading into an adjacent ditch.

The trench is marked on a site-plan (P.A.D. Map) contained within the Fort Record Book (National Archives: WO 192/113). It is depicted in schematic form and annotated ‘P.A.D Trenches’, the initials standing for Passive Air Defence. The plan seems to indicate that the SW end of the trench was for use by ‘Off Duty’ crew and the NE end by ‘Employed Men’. The shelter is not depicted on a vertical aerial photograph (C614), taken in February 1941, but it is shown on another (5586.D309), dated 23 July 1941, both images being contained within the Fort Record Book.

Visited by HES Survey and Recording (JRS, AK, AMcC) 20 October 2016.

HES surveyed Toward Battery air-raid shelter with students from the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology, University of Glasgow on 20 October 2016 with plane-table and alidade at a scale of 1:100. The resultant plan was redrawn in vector graphics software at a scale of 1:250.