Reasons for Designation
The term battery refers to any place where artillery is positioned to allow guns to cover a particular area such as a line of communication or the approaches to a defended location. Although often contained within artillery forts designed to withstand sieges, typically including resident garrisons, many batteries were lightly defended and only manned at fighting strength in times of emergency.
Batteries not contained within forts or castles were either open, with some approaches left undefended or enclosed, often with a loopholed wall, ditch and/or fence designed to repel small scale attacks. Battery design evolved over time with developments in artillery. Those of the 16th and 17th centuries were normally simple raised earthwork platforms faced with turf, facines (bundles of sticks), or wicker baskets filled with earth and known as gabions. More permanent batteries, normally those on the coast, were faced in stone. The guns and gunners were typically protected by a raised parapet with guns firing through embrasures. In the 18th century, traversing guns using carriages mounted on pivots were increasingly employed. The Royal Commission fortifications are a group of related sites established in response to the 1859 Royal Commission report on the defence of the United Kingdom. This had been set up following an invasion scare caused by the strengthening of the French Navy. These fortifications represented the largest maritime defence programme since the initiative of Henry VIII in 1539-40. The programme built upon the defensive works already begun at Plymouth and elsewhere and recommended the improvement of existing fortifications as well as the construction of new ones. There were eventually some 70 forts and batteries in England which were due wholly or in part to the Royal Commission. These constitute a well-defined group with common design characteristics, armament and defensive provisions. Whether reused or not during the 20th century, they are the most visible core of Britain's coastal defence. The battery and Royal Commission fortifications called Redoubt No.5 at Maker Heights survives well and will retain archaeological and architectural evidence relating to its construction, development, use, strategic, political and historic significance.
Details
The monument includes a battery with Royal Commission fortifications, situated on the northern side of the prominent ridge on the Rame Peninsula known as Maker Heights which overlooks the Millbrook Lake. The battery survives as a roughly-rectangular structure. It is defined by stone-faced ramparts with bull-nosed decorated copings and an outer gorge of up to 6m deep with interior structures including a gatehouse, barracks with bombproof roofs and musketry loops, protecting the now missing bridge, concentrated on the eastern side of the battery and gun emplacements on the other flanks. The battery was built as a temporary feature in 1779 for the War of American Independence and was meant to protect the four redoubts of the Maker Line (the subjects of separate schedulings) and was made permanent in 1782-3, and intended to form a bastion for a much larger fort which was never built. In 1787 - 91 the redoubt was strengthened by the addition of the stone revetments, a loop holed barracks along the gorge and gun platforms. It was renamed 'Redoubt No.5 (2nd Devon) in 1788. From 1808 to 1811 it had nine guns in total; two on the north flank, three on the south and four on the west. It was probably not completely repaired under the Royal Commission proposals and is thought to have been abandoned by 1866.
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
Legacy System number:
CO 833
Legacy System:
RSM - OCN
End of official list entry
