Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Citadel Battery was built in c. 1900 to defend Dover Harbour. The battery consisted of 3 gun emplacements, each with a 9.2 inch gun. No. 2 gun was located centrally within the complex but was removed in 1911 unlike Nos. 1 and 3 guns which remained until the end of WWII. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• GUN EMPLACEMENT (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1900 AD? to 1911 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

Three gun emplacements were constructed and armed at the Citadel Battery between 1901 and 1902, these were for 9.2-inch BL mark X guns on barbette mountings. A Report of the Committee on the Armament of Home Ports, dated 1905, severely criticised Citadel Batttery: it considered, first of all, that the 9.2-inch guns did not provide sufficient cover against bombarding cruisers, especially with the position-finding equipment in use. In 1910, the parapet carriages for the machine guns were replaced by tripod mountings, and in December of the same year one of the 9.2-inch guns (no II or B gun) was removed to Woolwich and the emplacement remained empty thereafter. The three emplacements are arranged in series, each one comprises a gun pit defined by a barbette, 2.2m high, which splays to the rear and joins with parapet walls which run between the emplacements. Each emplacement is essentially identical, with only slight variation in the positioning of particular features. Construction is of concrete and steel throughout. Emplacement for gun no II varies slightly, not least because the gun was dismantled and removed in 1911. There is only one ready-use ammunition locker in the barbette; a cartridge recess in the eastern wall. The scars marking the positions of three carbine racks are evident. The concrete within the holdfast has been lowered by 8cms, further exposing the steel bolts. A concrete platform, the base of a small structure, occupies the southern part of the gun pit floor. This was part of a flat-roofed building, visible on air photographs of 1945. The steel loading platform has been totally removed from the gun pit and the sides of the barbette. (1-2)

<1> RCHME, 2000, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 8: The Citadel Battery: An early 20th-century coastal battery (Unpublished document). SKE17504.

<2> John A. Guy, 2013, Verbal communication from John Guy, defence expert working in the Dover area (Verbal communication). SKE24831.

Sources and further reading