Nigg Battery

This grass-grown pile of reinforced cast concrete and brick rubble, situated in rough pasture 19.5m E of the E gun emplacement (NJ86NW 10.9), is all that remains of a battery observation post. It measures 10m from NNE to SSW by 7m transversely. Traces of two rectangular compartments are visible below the detritus. The better preserved on the SSW measures 3m from WNW to ESE by 2.8m within brick walls 0.24m thick and 0.95m high. A lintel adhering to a large fragment of a flat concrete roof marks what may be the remains of a doorway on the WNW. Another large fragment also retains what may be a small circular vent for the chimney of a stove and a moulded gutter along one edge of the slab.

An undated sketch map of the battery in the Fort Record Book held at the National Archives at Kew (WO192/248) identifies this building as ‘4. B.O.P.’ – a Battery Observation Post. It was replaced by the post at Dunskeath Castle (NH86NW 10.2), as the Field Record Book records that it was found to have been built too close to the gun emplacements (WO192//247). The post is shown before demolition on an aerial photograph (CPE/Scot/UK/0293 SFFO 0044) flown on 17 September 1947 and even more clearly upon an aerial photograph (SC2087406) taken in 1972, which forms part of the John Dewar collection curated by HES.

The Cromarty Petroleum Company purchased the land in 1978 and, like some of the other buildings forming part of the battery, it was demolished by bulldozers between March and May in that year [Aberdeen Press and Journal, Saturday 13 May 1978, p.1).

Visited by HES, Survey and Recording (ATW, AKK, KLG), 28 March 2019.