North Sutor, Coast Battery

This moss- and grass-grown concrete building platform, which is situated 29m NNW of a weapons pit (NH86NW 9.66) that originally underlay the World War 2 security fence (NH86NW 9.51), formed part of the infrastructure of the battery introduced by the Admiralty in World War 1. It combines the floor-layouts of two different compartments, both of which are rectangular on plan. The W compartment measures 6.3m from E to W by 2.2m transversely, with a threshold at its W end and a moulded gutter on its S side; while E compartment measures at least 6.2m from E to W by 2.9m transversely. Bolts in low sill walls indicate that the building originally had a timber superstructure. A grass-grown gully crossing the platform from NW to SE and situated almost midway results from the removal of the World War 2 security fence on this line which slighted the earlier World War 1 building platform. The frame of a twin inspection cover concrete drain, removed from an unknown location, partly overlies the S side of the smaller compartment.

The building is identified as a ‘Paint Shop’ on a sketch map entitled ‘Telephone Circuits’, dated 7 May 1919, held in the National Archives at Kew (ADM 7/942); while a plan in the same archives (WO78/5192: 16/19), indicates that the E compartment was an ‘Oil E.Cs. Store’ and the W compartment was the ‘Paint Store’. The building is depicted from the NW in a photograph taken on 23 March 1913 during the construction of the battery; and it is also visible as a concrete building platform on two RAF aerial photographs (106G/RAF/0751/6039-40) flown on 31 August 1945.

Visited by HES, Survey and Recording (ATW, AKK), 16 March 2019.