Forth Defences, Outer, Pettycur Battery

The Pettycur Battery was added to the defence of the Forth in 1916; the land between the existing Crying Hill plot and the sea were acquired and two 6-inch guns, transferred from Carlingnose, North Queensferry, were reported as being ready for action in January 1917, although the armament was included in a table of all the Forth guns dated June 1916. A Defence Electric Light was added on the pier of Pettycur Harbour for this battery (in addition to the two already in place for Kinghorn, and powered from the same engine room) (see NT28NE 48.03) in 1917.

The Pettycur Battery comprised a pair of linked concrete emplacements for the guns, built above an underground magazine. The Pettycur battery had no separate accommodation or administrative offices or workshops and seems effectively to have been part of Kinghorn (see NT28NE 47.00). Its guns were known as “Q” Section, while those at Kinghorn were “R” and “S” Sections.

In the definitive list of guns in the Forth defences in October 1916 the armament of Pettycur is given as two 6-inch guns, with 1 Defence Electric Light. The light was put in an emplacement on the breakwater of Pettycur Harbour in 1917. Power was taken from the engine below the Pettycur Battery, built to supply the two DELs of Kinghorn Battery (see NT28NE 47.09).

The two 6-inch guns at Pettycur were put on a care and maintenance basis in 1920 but brought back onto the ‘Approved Armament’ of the Forth in March 1938. A modern building mapped as Villa Atina sits on the battery, and the concrete base of the latrine block is visible in rough ground just to the west, on satellite photographs.

The Fort Record Book (The National Archives WO 192/250) contains a map dated 1907 that showed barbed wire entanglements along the sea-front of Kinghorn Battery and right around the Fire Control and Position Finding Posts at Crying Hill, and many firing positions and defended buildings on their perimeters. In the First World War both Kinghorn and Pettycur had a pair of .303 machine-guns for close defence. A map of the battery dated 1922 (The National Archives WO 192/250) shows that there were four blockhouses (pillboxes) around Pettycur battery. One of these survives [NT28NE 47.01]; it appears on a map pre-dating the construction of Pettycur Battery and had been built to protect the Fire Control Post on Crying Hill.

Information from HS/RCAHMS World War One Audit Project (GJB) 30 August 2013.

NT28NE 48.00 2664 8632

NT28NE 48.01 NT 2657 8657 Pettycur Battery Blockhouse

Pettycur Battery dates from the First World War and is situated on the W side of Kinghorn Ness to the N of Pettycur Road. Constructed of brick and concrete, it has now been demolished and the site built on by new housing. Only the searchlight emplacement survives overlooking the seafront and the blockhouse (NT28NE 48.01).

Two 6-inch MkVII/II guns were installed in 1917 from Carlingnose Battery (NT18SW 105). The date of removal of the guns and the closure of the Battery is not known.

J Guy 1994; NMRS MS 810/3

The coast battery and accommodation camp for crew is visible on RAF vertical air photographs (106G/UK 12, Pt.1, 6057-6058, flown 15 April 1946). The photographs show that the accommodation camp consists of at least 25 huts and buildings. The battery is alos visible on RAF WW II vertical and oblique air photographs (sortie 309E, flown 6 April 1941).

Information from RCAHMS (DE), March 2005