Nigg Battery

This grass-grown pile reinforced cast concrete and brick rubble, situated in rough pasture 10.5m N of the U1456 public road and 7m S of a silage clamp (NH86NW 23), is all that remains of a magazine that was constructed to serve the E gun emplacement (NH86NW 10.9). It measures 9m from NNW to SSE by 5.5m transversely and 1.2m high. The building may have been rectangular on plan, but apart from two walls defining an entrance passage on the W that leads to a doorway with a twisted metal frame, together with a shelf supported by a brick pier on the NE, little of the structure can be made out. Only a short length of the sunken trackway that linked the magazine and the gun emplacement survives SW of the U1456 public road.

The magazine is visible as a pronounced turf-covered swelling on an aerial photograph (CPE/Scot/UK/0293 SFFO 0045) flown on 17 September 1947. It is also shown on an aerial photograph (SC2087406) taken in 1972, which forms part of the John Dewar collection curated by HES. This not only confirms that it was originally at least partly buried like its counterpart to the NW (NH86NW 10.29), but also shows a large porch at its SW corner towards which the sunken track ran.

The Cromarty Petroleum Company purchased the land in 1975 and, like some of the other buildings forming part of the battery, the magazine 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), 30 March 2019.