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St Martin's Battery
Overview
St. Martin’s Battery was the first (1876) of the few gun
positions built on Western Heights for coastal defence. It was
upgraded in World War II as an Emergency Coastal Battery, and
renamed Western Heights Battery. The two periods of construction
are easily distinguishable.
The Role of St. Martin’s Battery
Originally, Western Heights was built to defend Dover from a
landward attack by invading French armies. The introduction of
steam-driven armour-plated warships with improved artillery
altered the invasion scenario. The remit of the Battery was to
engage enemy warships attempting to enter or attack the harbour.
It was equipped with three 10” guns placed in gun pits alongside
each other in a very slight curve, each flanked by its own
magazine (ammunition store). In 1890, a new magazine was dug
into the bank behind the gun pits.
St Martin’s Battery, showing the camouflaged roofs of the gun
emplacements.
Photo courtesy of Paul Wells
The Armaments
The guns mounted at the Battery during this early period were
rifled muzzle-loaders (RMLs). The shells and powder were brought
from the magazine on trolleys running on rails (still visible)
and lifted up to the muzzle with a hoist. Because the muzzle had
to be accessible for loading, the barrels had to be kept short.
This meant that fast-burning powder had to be used to accelerate
the shell to sufficient velocity.
Breech loading guns - loaded from the rear end of the barrel –
were faster and more convenient to use. Barrels could be made
longer, allowing the use of slower-burning powder and a much
lighter barrel. Two new coastal defence batteries – South Front
and Citadel – were equipped with breech loaders, and St Martin’s
Battery became obsolete. By 1909, it had been dismantled.
World War II
In September 1940, the Battery was brought back into use as an
Emergency Coastal Battery and re-named Western Heights Battery.
It underwent some modernisation to equip it for its new weapons
– three 6” Mark VII naval breech-loaders dating from 1898. The
change in loading systems needed some change in building design.
The gun pits were filled in and capped with concrete, set into
which were three rings of massive steel bolts – the holdfasts –
to which the 6” guns were mounted. A protective concrete canopy
was built over the battery, supported on brick walls. It is easy
to distinguish between the original building and the later
additions – the Victorian bricks were yellowish in colour, while
those of the 1940s were red. A jagged brick wall and earth on
top of the canopy broke up the lines of the Battery and provided
some camouflage.
Two pillboxes were built at the battery, for local defence and
against attack by low-flying aircraft. These were the
rectangular ‘Type 23’ and each had a mounting for a light
anti-aircraft gun. One is at the north end of the battery and
the other on the bank behind it. On top of the canopy are the
remains of other defences – probably another light machine gun.
Western Heights Battery was manned by 143 personnel from 414
Coast Battery. This large unit needed greater accommodation and
shelter, so the earlier Victorian magazine (heavily overgrown at
present) was extended to form what is known as the ‘Deep
Shelter’, cut 30 feet down into the cliff with a tunnel (now
blocked off) leading to the Grand Shaft Barracks below.
The Fort Record Book, Western Heights Battery, 1940-47 explains
that the battery was ‘responsible for its own local defence and
cannot rely on receiving outside help’.
(Public Record Office WO192/198).
As the tide of the war changed, the Battery was put on a ‘Care
and Maintenance’ schedule in 1944, and the guns finally removed
in 1947.
Victorian
1. Entrance to 1890 magazine and Deep Shelter.
2. Battery Observation Post.
3. Stores and magazines.
4. Gun aprons (glacis).
WWII
5. Stores.
6. ‘Ready-use’ ammunition lockers.
7. Gun floors.
8. Gun holdfasts.
9. ‘Type 23’ pillbox with Bren gun mounting.
10. Shelter for gun detachment.
St Martin’s Battery today.
Adapted from a diagram by courtesy of English Heritage
Gallery
Battery as viewed from the Western Docks
Emplacement no.1
Note rough brickwork to break up construction against skyline
Image taken pre-WW2 when overhead cover was added for protection
Type 23 Pillbox at eastern end of battery
Entrance to Victorian magazine and WW2 deep shelter
Standard steel girder and corrugated iron construction of
shelter
Blast protected lower entrance (now blocked) to shelter.
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