Description

The monument comprises a gun battery and martello tower of 19th-century date. It is in the care of the Secretary of State for Scotland and is being re-scheduled to clarify the extent of the protected area.

The monument lies on the coast at the Point of Hackness. It comprises a gun battery and a martello tower which were built between 1813 and 1815 to guard the anchorage in Longhope Sound against attacks by American privateers. The battery was originally intended to stand alone; but on the recommendation of Major Smyth, who planned the structure at the request of the Admiralty, two towers were added, one at Hackness and the other at Crockness, to protect it from land assault.

The battery originally mounted eight 24-pounder guns firing en barbette over a sloping parapet and mounted in V-formation on timber traversing carriages. Behind the guns were the soldiers' barrack room and store, and behind that the magazine, a small rectangular structure with a brick vaulted roof (now mostly fallen in) sunk partly below ground and protected by an earth bank. The whole installation was enclosed by a stone wall and ditch on the landward side.

In 1866, the battery was modified to take four 68-pounder guns firing through embrasures. An ammunition store was added behind the salient of the rampart and separate accommodation was added to the barrack for NCOs. Other new buildings included a guard house, officers' quarters, a cookhouse, stores and ablutions block and a separate latrine block.

An additional magazine was constructed around 1892, when the 68-pounders were used for the first time by the Orkney Volunteer Artillery. The guns were removed soon afterwards, and the battery was used during the First World War by the naval personnel who operated the boom defences guarding one of the entrances to Scapa Flow.

The martello tower lies about 200m to the SE of the battery. It is elliptical on plan, the seaward-facing wall being twice as thick as that on the landward side. The tower stands to a height of about 10m and is entered at first-floor level by a door some 4m above ground level. Stairways within the wall of the tower lead from the living quarters on the first floor up to the gun platform and down to the ground-level storeroom, magazine and cistern.

The gun platform was originally constructed to mount a single 24-pounder cannon on a revolving carriage. It was modified in 1866, when a 68-pounder replaced the original gun. Although this was removed in the 1890s, an appropriate replacement has now been installed on a reproduction carriage. The tower was used as a naval signal-post during the First World War.

Some 112m NE of the martello tower stands the concrete anti-blast shelter which stood behind the Coastguard lookout hut, erected c.1940.

The area proposed for scheduling comprises the remains described and an area around them within which related material may be expected to be found. It is irregular with maximum dimensions of 380m NE-SW by 390m NNW-SSE, as shown in red on the accompanying map extract.

The area, which coincides with that in state care, is defined on the landward side by inscribed War Department concrete marker posts numbered 1-8 and on the NE, seaward side by low water level of ordinary spring tides.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance because it represents a well-built and well-preserved example of a 19th-century coastal battery and an equally well-preserved martello tower, of which there are two other examples in Scotland. The significance of the site is enhanced by the evidence for the modifications which the battery and martello tower underwent during their century-and-a-half of military use, and by the documentary evidence which relates to them. The importance of the site is reflected in its status as a property in state care.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as ND 39 SW 8 and ND 39 SW 9.

Bibliography:

Ashmore, P (ed.), 1995, The ancient monuments of Orkney. HMSO. Edinburgh.

Cross, M, 1994, Bibliography of Monuments in the Care of the Secretary of State for Scotland, 341. Glasgow.

Fereday, R P, 1971, The Longhope Battery and Towers, Stromness.

Ritchie, A, 1996, Orkney, The Stationary Office; Edinburgh.
Historic Environment Scotland Properties
Hackness Battery & Martello Tower
https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/hackness-martello-tower-and-battery
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Source: Historic Environment Scotland