Nigg Battery

Two gun emplacements, reduced to piles of reinforced cast concrete and brick rubble, are situated in rough pasture immediately SSE of the U1456 public road. The buildings, which differ slightly in their design, are terraced into the rising ground to the N and are set 14m apart; and while the E emplacement stands above an artificial scarp, the W emplacement stands at its foot.

The best preserved is the eastern emplacement (NH 80518 69020), where part of the semi-circular gun-pit remains intact and faces SW. Behind this lies a ruined L-shaped corridor, which wraps around the NE corner of the building. The remains of a sunken track S of the U1456 public road approaches an entrance at the WSW end of this corridor from the magazine that served the emplacement to the NE (NH86NW 10.22), while another doorway in the corridor at the N corner of the building enabled the gun-pit to be reached; but beyond this point the corridor simply terminates part way down the ENE side of the building. The gun-pit, itself, measures 11.5m square within a cement-rendered, curving brick parapet 0.37m thick and 0.68m high, while the rear wall measures 0.5m thick and rises to a height of at least 2.2m. The holdfast within the pit retains 19 metal bolts in a circular steel plate measuring 1.1m in diameter. Although the collapse of the building has resulted in what remains of the flat roof largely obscuring these internal arrangements, the canopy is easily identifiable by its wavy-edged outline and the remains of a large rectangular opening intended to mitigate the effects of the gun blast. The underside of the roof has been camouflaged with a red-brown wash. By contrast, the smaller concrete beams that supported it have been blackwashed, like the massive horizontal concrete beams that carried these and distributed their weight, but on the latter the wash is much faded.

The western emplacement (NH 80494 69036) also retains traces of a semi-circular gun-pit facing SW, as well as the remains of a ruined L-shaped corridor behind this at the SE corner. However, it differs from its neighbour in that there is an entrance at the SE end of the corridor from which the gun-pit was reached. There was almost certainly another on the WSW that connected with a grass-grown sunken track, measuring 3m broad and 0.45m deep, which runs NNW to the magazine (NH86NW 10.29) that served it situated N of the U1456 public road. The gun-pit measures at least 9m square within what remains of its curving brick parapet, while the rear wall measures 0.5m thick. Nevertheless, the collapse of the gun emplacement’s roof has also largely obscured its internal arrangements here, too. Its canopy is identifiable by its wavy edged outline and the remains of the large rectangular opening behind it. There are traces of camouflage paint on its underside, but in this instance the smaller beams at right angles to the massive horizontal beams supporting them have been blackwashed with vertical stripes.

An undated sketch map of the battery in the Fort Record Book held at the National Archives at Kew (WO192/248) identifies the eastern emplacement as ‘6. No.2 Gun’, while its counterpart to the NW is denoted ‘7. No.1 Gun’. Both are shown before demolition on an aerial photograph (CPE/Scot/UK/0293 SFFO 0044) flown on 17 September 1947. They are also depicted before demolition on an aerial photograph (SC2087406) taken in 1972, which forms part of the John Dewar collection curated by HES. This clearly brings out their differences, especially in the disposition of the corridors at their corners, their lower elevation in relation to the gun-pits’ roofs, which themselves were divided into two parts.

The Cromarty Petroleum Company purchased the land in 1978 and like some of the other buildings forming part of the battery, the gun-pits were 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.