Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

St Martins Battery is a situated on a bluff near the cliff edge overlooking the Western Docks of Dover harbour and was constructed between 1874 and 1877. The completed battery comprised three deep concrete gun emplacements with ammunition stores between them. Each emplacement was constructed as a deep gun pit, open to the rear, containing a raised circular gun platform reached via steps from the covered way. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• GUN EMPLACEMENT (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1874 AD to 1944 AD)

Full description

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Summarised From Report:

St Martins Battery is a situated on a bluff near the cliff edge overlooking the Western Docks of Dover harbour and was constructed between 1874 and 1877. The completed battery comprised three deep concrete gun emplacements with ammunition stores between them. Each emplacement was constructed as a deep gun pit, open to the rear, containing a raised circular gun platform reached via steps from the covered way. The guns were mounted en barbette, on ‘C’ pivots with circular racers that enabled a wide arc of traverse, while the front of each emplacement was protected by a
sloping concrete apron. All three were identical.

The battery was disarmed by 1902 and remained, probably in care and maintenance, until 1940. At this time, it was brought back into service and extensively remodelled to take three 6-inch guns for coast defence, remaining operational until late in 1944. Today the emplacements have been infilled with Second World War concrete at the front, but the original walls become visible to the rear, where they are shared with the adjacent ammunition stores, in yellow stock brick, still standing to full height of 2.15m (7ft) above the original floor. In each emplacement, the gun floor retains the ring of securing bolts for the gun holdfast and, in no I, the steel baseplate survives. There were 18 bolts forming a ring c 1.04m (3ft 5in) in diameter, but in all three emplacements the rear bolts are missing, possibly removed with the holdfasts themselves. (1)

A plan dating to 1877 shows the battery as it was constructed and completed in that year and includes details of the, gun emplacements, the earthworks surrounding the battery, interior features of the ammunition stores as well and cross sections of all the features. (2)

<1> RCHME, 2000, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 5: St Martin's Battery, 19th and 20th-century artillery battery (Unpublished document). SKE17500.

<2> Royal Engineers, 1877, Hand-tinted sections and plans of St Martin's Battery at Western Heights (Plan). SKE51593.

Sources and further reading

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