The Battery - History |
While doing research for the Battery project we found some snippets of history which we have added to this page. If you know more about the history of the Battery or know of other sources, then pleas use our Feedback form to tell us about it. The battery was built on Lamer Island in 1781 to defend the town from privateers. It was used as a fever hospital in the late 1800s and again used as a hospital during the First World War until 1927. The rock on which it is built is columnar basalt, similar to the Giant’s Causeway. In 1779, the inhabitants were kept in a state of alarm by the appearance of the notorious Paul Jones with a fleet of five ships, which lay off the port for several days; and in 1781, Captain Fall, an American pirate, attempted to carry off a vessel which was in the mouth of the harbour, but he was beaten off after the exchange of a few shots by the inhabitants, and abandoned his enterprise. To defend the town from similar attacks, a battery of sixteen guns was erected in the same year; and during the apprehension of an invasion by the French, who were expected to make a descent at Belhaven bay, an encampment was formed on the common of West Barns, under the command of General Don. Soon after, barracks were erected to the west of the castle for 1200 infantry, and at Belhaven for 300 cavalry; and a volunteer corps and a troop of yeomanry were raised in the neighbourhood. Dunbar Cottage Hospital has its origins in the Battery Hospital, a small military hospital which functioned during World War I. At the end of the War local doctors and others decided to utilise the building to found a cottage hospital. Dunbar and District Cottage Hospital opened in July 1919 and continued to operate in the Battery Hospital building until December 1926. Funds were raised to purchase a larger building and in 1927 the Managers acquired Yorke Lodge: the house was altered and opened as a cottage hospital in May 1927. On transfer to the Nationa Health Service in 1948, the hospital became part of East Lothian Hospitals Board of Management. At this time its name was changed to Dunbar Cottage Hospital, and its bed complement was 13. The hospital closed in March 1973 when hospital services in Dunbar were centralised at Belhaven Hospital. The building has since been used as a holiday home for patients. In 1974 this home became part of North Lothian District of Lothian Health Board. Source: http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/histheal/hospital/dunbar.html
The BatteryThe New Statistical Account, in an article written in 1833, states that a battery of sixteen guns was built in 1781, after an American raider, Captain Fall, had tried to cut a ship out of the harbour entrance.7 It seems to have been a civic undertaking, rather than part of a national system of defence, as in 1793 the Provost advised the Town Council that, 'in the present state of this country, it was proper to put the Battery into proper order, and to procure a quantity of powder'; the structure was accordingly 'repaired', the Provost was authorised to 'commission' the powder, and the engagement of two night-watchmen was approved.8 The Statistical Account of Scotland gives the number of guns in that same year as twelve, mentioning '9, 12 and 18 pounders'.9 In 1795 the place was inspected by an R.E. lieutenant with initials 'W.G.', whose report to Lord Adam Gordon, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, has been preserved10; details of the armament were evidently given in a separate statement,, which has disappeared, but W.G. states that there were sixteen embrasures and mentions six-, nine and twelve-pounder guns and also eighteen-pounder shot, together with four carronades for the defence of the landward face of the Battery. He adds that 'if two of the 12 pounders and the furnace', which latter he had recommended for the heating of shot, 'were placed in the castle they might either assist the effect of the guns of the battery or would command the bay to the westward5; and he notes that the furnace would be safer there than inside the Battery and close to the magazine. In 1808 the magistrates were requested by the Office of Ordnance to 'cause the stone Platforms of the Guns ... to be repaired and made fit for service'1; and in 1814 by the O.G. Artillery in North Britain to repair two eighteen-pounder and two twelve-pounder gun-carriages.2 After the 'general peace', i.e. presumably in or after 1815, the guns were removed to Edinburgh.3 In later years the buildings were used as a hospital,4 taking military patients during the first World War, but they were gutted in a Coronation bonfire in 1936 and the place is now derelict (PI. XVIII, i). The Battery stands on the highest part of the Island, and is built of sandstone blocks, well coursed and mainly red, though the landward face is generally paler and pinkish. It is roughly D-shaped on plan, measuring 118 ft. 6 in. internally from NE. to SW. by 116 ft. externally along the chord. Its rounded seaward face, which is slightly flattened on the E., commands a field of fire of at least 180° from NW. to SE. while its entrance looks SW. towards the causeway. The landward face contains a straight central section 52 ft. 6 in. long, flanked by two wings which splay forwards a perpendicular distance of 8 ft.; but these wings are not loop-holed for the defence of the entrance, and the NW. one is in fact filled up internally to the level of the gun-platform, here 6 ft. below the wallhead. Elsewhere the parapet is a few inches lower. The landward wall, which carries an ovolo coping 6f in. thick, is 13 ft. high at the entrance, but elsewhere the external height of the wall varies greatly according to the level of the rock on which it is founded. The regularity of the plan is broken at the S. corner by a small projection, designed to hold one gun firing seawards (NE.) and two across the outer end of Broad Haven. The entrance-gate (PI. XVIII, 4) is 8 ft. wide and has a segmental head; the quoins and voussoirs are alternately long and short, and the central voussoir has a false keystone worked on it in relief. The gun-platform is reached by a ramp running straight up from the entrance; its SE. part overlies a barrel-vaulted basement-range, originally magazines and guardroom, which is reached from a small yard opening from the entrance on the level. The older 25-inch maps show that this yard was roofed over when the Battery was serving as a hospital. Also entered from the yard is the shell of a two-storeyed house, which occupies the S. corner of the Battery; this is not an original feature, as the gun-platform has been removed to make room for its upper storey and two of the three embrasures in the projection have been adapted as windows while the third has been built up. Of the thirteen remaining embrasures, five face NW. and four each NE. and SE.; the wall in which they are set is 3 ft. thick, and the one chosen for measurement was 3 ft. 2 in. wide internally, 4 ft. externally and 2 ft. 6 in. at i ft. in from the inner face. Behind some of them paved stances for guns still remain; a relatively undamaged one measured 17 ft. 6 in. from front to rear by 12 ft. in width. The report of 1795 remarks, not very lucidly, that 'there are earthen merlons added to the interior part of the embrasures in front which in a good measure remedy the disadvantage of the stone wall'; whatever the arrangement of the merlons actually was, its object was no doubt to stop flying chips when the wall was under bombardment. The report also states that the embrasures for the four carronades, which were to have covered the landward front, had not been 'compleated', but there is in fact no structural evidence that they had ever even been begun. The Battery was served by a pier,5 built on the rocks at the E. extremity of the Island, which was washed away in a storm at some date between 1914 and 1918. It was approached by the rock-cut roadway that runs below the SE. wall of the Battery, and its NW. side was protected from high seas by a wall, the landward end of which is still in place. Source: THE OLD HARBOURS OF DUNBAR by ANGUS GRAHAM, F.S.A.SCOT. |
