Forth Defences, Kinghorn And Pettycur Batteries

NT28NE 47.00 Kinghorn & Pettycur Batteries (see NT28NE 48.00).

The coast batteries at Kinghorn and Pettycur lay on the same headland and were generally described together in War Office documents and seem to have been commanded as a single unit. The ‘History of the Battery’ (compiled in March 1949) in the Fort Record Book described both.

The site for the Kinghorn Battery was acquired by the War Department in three portions in 1863, 1878 and 1896, and between 1902 and 1904 two houses known as ‘Belmont’ and ‘Whitehouses’, and a parcel of land just to the west, at Crying Hill, were acquired. The battery’s Fire Control Post [NT28NE 48.03] was built on the Crying Hill plot. The Pettycur Battery [NT28NE 48.00] incorporated the Crying Hill plot.

The first recorded armament of the battery is in 1880, when two 10-inch Rifled Muzzle Loader guns were mounted on Kinghorn battery. Two 4.7-inch Quick Firing guns [NT28NE 47.03] were added in 1892, and in 1899 two further 10-inch RML guns were added (The National Archives WO 192/250). The emplacements for the 4.7-inch guns were built between February 1892 and August 1893, at a cost of £2157 (over £250,000 at modern prices) (The National Archives WO78/5178).

The rebuilding of the Kinghorn Battery began in 1903. A June 1903 summary of the planned and current armament of the Forth shows that Kinghorn was intended to have a 9.2-inch gun, two 6-inch guns and the two 4.7-inch guns already in position. The emplacement for the 9.2-inch gun [NT28NE 47.02] was built between August 1903 and October 1904, at a cost of £8793 (almost £1M at 2013 prices, but £856 under budget - a saving of almost 10%). The two 6-inch guns were built just to the north [NT28NE 47.01]. The 9.2-inch gun and 6-inch guns were known as “B” and “F” Groups respectively at first but were renamed “R” and “S” Groups and then “Sections”. The History of the Battery in the Fort Record Book (The National Archives WO 192/250) states that the 6-inch gun battery was at some point designated as for training only, being taken back onto the approved armament of the Forth on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

In addition to the 4.7-inch, 6-inch and 9.2-inch guns, five 5-inch guns were mounted in a practice battery [NT28NE 47.05], between “A” and “B” Groups. These guns were removed in 1908, according to the Fort Record Book. In 1913 both the 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns at Kinghorn were recorded as being ‘mounted for drill and practice’, the 9.2-inch gun being the only gun on the ‘approved armament’ of the Forth.

The two 4.7-inch guns were removed and despatched to the battery at Downing Point in October 1914 as temporary armament (The National Archives WO192/250). There is no evidence that they were ever returned: they do not appear on a 1916 list of the guns in the Forth batteries and a 1918 map of the battery is annotated ‘Dismounted’ in pencil across the 4.7-inch emplacements. In the definitive list of guns in the Forth defences in October 1916 the armament of Kinghorn is given as one 9.2-inch gun and two 6-inch guns, with 2 Defence Electric Lights.The engine room for the DELs [NT28NE 47.09] was built a little to the west, below what would be the site for Pettycur battery. Two DELs were put in place, one to the north of the 6-inch guns and one to the south of the 9.2-inch gun, in 1916.

On a 1918 map of the battery the two 6-inch guns are referred to as S/1 (the northern) and S/2. The Fort Record Book records that one of Kinghorn’s two 6-inch guns was removed in July 1918 and sent to Calais, for the British Expeditionary Force in France (The National Archives WO 192/250) - many 6-inch naval guns were mounted on wheeled carriages and used as heavy field artillery. The gun was replaced by another from Woolwich in May 1918.

The 9.2-inch gun was ‘condemned’ after inspection in 1920, owing to wear, but was allowed to continue in use with restrictions on the types of ammunition used and the firing rate. It and the 6-inch guns were retained for training purposes; the 9.2-inch gun was brought into the reserve armament of the estuary in March 1938, when the 6-inch guns were brought back into active service as part of the ‘approved armament’ of the Forth. The 9.2-inch gun was removed at some point between 1938 and 1949.

The Battery Control Post was originally situated behind and between the 9.2-inch and 6-inch batters, but a new Fire Control Post and Position Finding Cell [NT28NE 47.13] for the battery were built about 300m to the west of the battery, on the plot of land at Crying Hill in 1907, set into the slope of the hill (The National Archives WO78/5178).

Pettycur

The Pettycur Battery (see NT28NE 48.00) was added to the defence of the Forth in 1916; the land between the existing Crying Hill plot and the sea were acquired and two 6-inch guns, transferred from Carlingnose, North Queensferry, were reported as being ready for action in January 1917, although the armament was included in a table of all the Forth guns dated June 1916. A Defence Electric Light was added on the pier of Pettycur Harbour for this battery (in addition to the two already in place for Kinghorn, and powered from the same engine room (see NT28NE 47.09)) in 1917.

The Pettycur Battery comprised a pair of linked concrete emplacements for the guns, built above an underground magazine. The Pettycur battery had no separate accommodation or administrative offices or workshops and seems effectively to have been part of Kinghorn (see NT28NE 47.00). Its guns were known as “Q” Section, while those at Kinghorn were “R” and “S” Sections.

In the definitive list of guns in the Forth defences in October 1916 the armament of Pettycur is given as two 6-inch guns, with 1 Defence Electric Light. The light was put in an emplacement on the breakwater of Pettycur Harbour in 1917. Power was taken from the engine below the Pettycur Battery, built to supply the two DELs of Kinghorn Battery (see NT28NE 47.09).

The two 6-inch guns at Pettycur were put on a care and maintenance basis in 1920 but brought back onto the ‘Approved Armament’ of the Forth in March 1938. A modern building mapped as Villa Atina sits on the battery, and the concrete base of the latrine block is visible in rough ground just to the west, on satellite photographs.

Close defence

An important aspect of coast defence was to prevent batteries being put out of action by being attacked by landings of troops from the sea, or from an attack from the rear. The Fort Record Book contains a map dated 1907 that showed barbed wire entanglements along the sea-front of Kinghorn Battery and right around the Fire Control and Position Finding Posts at Crying Hill, and many firing positions and defended buildings on their perimeters. In the First World War both Kinghorn and Pettycur had a pair of .303 machine-guns for close defence. A map of the battery dated 1922 shows that there were four blockhouses (pillboxes) around Pettycur battery. One of these survives [NT28NE 48.01]; it appears on a map pre-dating the construction of Pettycur Battery and had been built to protect the Fire Control Post on Crying Hill.

During the First World War the two batteries at Kinghorn and Pettycur were heavily defended from attack from inland. The first line of defence was the brick perimeter wall of Kinghorn Battery; at one point [NT28SW 47.06], opposite the end of Alexander the Third Street, the wall has been penetrated by nine steel-framed loop-holes for rifles. Five of these have been blocked up but four are open. Access from the north to the whole of the headland on which Kinghorn and Pettycur Batteries lay was blocked, by 1916, by a barbed wire entanglement north of Crying Hill, running to what was then the western end of Alexander the Third Street and then parallel to Pettycur Street until a barrier was provided by a continuous terrace of houses.

Further from the batteries the approaches to the NW, N and NE were heavily defended at Grangehill, the Candle Works, and Highlands/Abden Farm.

Information from HS/RCAHMS World War One Audit Project (GJB) 22 August 2013.

NT28NE 47.00 2699 8630

NT28NE 47.01 NT 2699 8638 Coast Battery (6-inch, First World War, Second World War)

NT28NE 47.02 NT 2698 8631 Coast Battery (9.2-inch, First World War)

NT28NE 47.03 NT 2693 8619 Coast Battery (4.7-inch, First World War)

NT28NE 47.04 NT 26727 86118 Searchlight Emplacement

NT28NE 47.05 NT 26969 86244 Coastal Battery (5-inch practice battery)

NT28NE 47.06 NT 26963 86353 Loopholed Wall

NT28NE 47.07 NT 26971 86481 Military Installation

NT28NE 47.08 NT 26966 86451 Military Installation; Observation Post

NT28NE 47.09 NT 26684 86158 Engine House

NT28NE 47.10 NT 26956 86278 Searchlight Battery

NT28NE 47.11 NT 26956 86258 Barracks

NT28NE 47.12 NT 27027 86324 Magazine

1 x 9.2" gun in 1912.

N H Clark 1986.

This may be the location of the battery proposed for Kinghorn in 1881, noted by Saunders.

A Saunders 1984.

Kinghorn Battery dating from both the First and Second World Wars is situated on the E side of Kinghorn Ness adjacent and E of Pettycur Road. Constructed of concrete, but now mostly demolished, only the rear wall, the 9.2-inch gun and searchlight emplacements survive. The 9.2-inch gun emplacement has had a modern house built in it.

Originally constructed in 1903 to take 6-inch, 4.7-inch and 9.2-inch guns, one 6-inch gun was removed to Downing Point (NT18SE 24) in 1914 and the 9.2-inch gun was possibly removed in 1939.

The battery was placed on a care and maintainance basis in November 1943, the guns being finally removed in 1956.

J Guy 1994; NMRS MS 810/3; PRO WO/192/250