Description

SS 45 SE
237/2/10008

WEMBURY
Staddon Heights Battery

GV
II
Gun battery. Construction begun October 1845 and completed 1847 (datestone above entrance). Limestone, constructed in with ashlar lintels and quoins to roughly coursed rubble on ground floor and dressed masonry above.

PLAN: the fort is aligned so that the armament projects towards the southwest and is built on three levels, the lowest occupied by stores with to the southwest a terreplein (where the guns were mounted) which was remodelled in 1898-89 (from which four armament base plates survive) when the corner towers were mainly demolished (foundations only survive). Upper levels comprised barracks, kitchen and servants' rooms for officers. In 1901, the upper floor contained officers' quarters and the middle floor the mess, kitchen and servants' rooms. Gatehouse projects to north of upper range, which exhibits a curved profile to the northeast. Originally surrounded on all sides by a dry ditch, which survives to the north. Enfilading fire provided by loop-holed walls in side walls of gatehouse, to parapet wall of upper storey officers' quarters and to the flank walls of the fort. A later loop-holed wall was built to cover the 1860s covered way down to Fort Bovisand.

EXTERIOR: Lintels over late C20 doors and fenestration, there being relieving arches over the upper floor windows. The lower storey has store rooms which project and flank a double-flight of stone steps to the centre. Semi-circular arched doorway on the next storey, opposite the steps, with flanking windows.

INTERIOR: largely remodelled as accommodation, notable survivals being the three iron water pumps and the mechanism for the drawbridge.

HISTORY: originally designed to accommodate three officers and ninety men, it was disarmed and used as accommodation for the officers and garrison on the completion and arming of Bovisand Fort in 1870-72. A covered way with a loop-holed wall was provided between the two batteries, which were also connected by a road, and after 1872 a boundary wall to the north was built. Staddon Point Battery was one of three batteries recommended by the Inter Service Committee on Harbour Defences in 1844, its intention being to protect Rennie's harbour and pier and cover the eastern entrance to Plymouth Sound: Picklecombe and Eastern King covered the other sides. Most of the defence works in the Staddon Heights area, which include Fort Bovisand, were constructed as an integrated, interdependent defensive system in the 1860s: the middle years of the nineteenth century had given rise to enormous technological advances (most notably the development of steam-powered, ironclad warships which could threaten enemy fleets regardless of many of the limitations of wind and tide, and rifled artillery which gave far greater range and accuracy to guns than ever before) which affected warfare radically, alarmed military engineers and, in part, stimulated some new works in the 1840s and the massive programme of coastal fortification during the 1860s, against the perceived threat of attack from France. The area around the naval dockyard at Plymouth retains the best-preserved group of this period.

Listing NGR: SX4880550733

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26659859

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)