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Lamb Holm Battery
Coastal Battery (Second World War)
Site Name Lamb Holm Battery
Classification Coastal Battery (Second World War)
Canmore ID 2366
Site Number HY40SE 13
NGR HY 48653 00163
NGR Description Centred on HY 48653 00163
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/2366
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Holm
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
HY40SE 13.00 centred 48653 00163
HY40SE 13.01 HY 48634 00077 and HY 48601 00069 Searchlight Battery
This coast battery is situated on the S side of Lamb Holm Island. It consists of one 12 pounder emplacement with a second gun mounted in an open emplacement, so that it had a 360 degree traverse which has now been removed. Placed on a care and maintainance basis in 1943.
J Guy 1993; NMRS MS 810/2.
One brick and concrete gun-emplacement, observation post, magazine and the engine house are all that survives of Lamb Holm coast battery situated in the centre of a grass field which now comprises the SW quadrant of the airstrip (HY40SE 57).
A second open emplacement was constructed about 17m NE of the surviving one, but this has now been demolished.
The battery was armed with two 12-pounder guns, one of which had been removed from Scad Head Battery (HY20SE 2.00) (PRO WO 199/2627).
Two searchlight platforms (HY 48634 00077 and HY 48601 00069) are still extant at the top of the coastal slope to the E of Kirk Point.
The magazine lies at HY 486596 00212 and the battery observation post at HY 48617 00163.
The battery is visible on RAF vertical air photographs (106G/Scot/UK 137, 3014-3015, flown 3 July 1946), which shows both gun-emplacements extant at each side of a track, which led from the Churchill Barrier to the site.
The guns were removed during December 1943 (WO 192/114).
Visited by RCAHMS (GS), August 1997
Field Visit (May 1979)
Lamb Holm battery, part of the World War II defences of Holm
Sound approach to Scapa Flow, was operational 1941-2 and was run
down after the closing of the Sounds by the Churchill Causeways
in 1943. It had 2 12-pdr guns in small concrete emplacements
with integral overhead protection, concrete magazine below ground
level, single level control position. On the cliffside at 4866
0007 were two positions each with three vertical slits, each
mounting fixed searchlights presumably 16 deg or 30 deg.
[R1],[R2]
The battery and searchlight emplacements survive in good
condition.
Information from Orkney SMR (RGL) May 79.
