Survey Data
Reg No
40900913
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Technical
Previous Name
Lenan Coastal Battery
Original Use
Battery
Date
1895 - 1905
Coordinates
229744, 444571
Date Recorded
24/09/2008
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Coastal defence battery with associated structures located on a small peninsula, built 1902, no longer in use. Barrack accommodation, water tower, guard house and surrounding fortifications to the south (see 40900914). Three semi-circular concrete gun emplacements with sloping concrete glacis are sunk into a cliff edge facing north-west and covering Lough Swilly. The guns and their mounting no longer remain. The gun emplacements have underground magazines, stores and shelters with remnant cartridge and shell hoists still in place. The central and southern gun emplacements are linked by a sunken road running between concrete retaining walls from the centre of the fort while the northern gun emplacement is approached along a separate sunken road. A concrete battery commander’s post is located c. 45m upslope/west of the northern gun emplacement and c. 70m behind this are two concrete position finding cells sunk into the ground and protected by concrete roofs. The central and northern emplacements are built over an underground magazine containing cartridge and shell stores and gun crew shelter. The southern emplacement has its own magazine and shelter. The magazines and shelters with linking corridors and stairs have rock-cut floors with limewashed red brick walls.
Appraisal
Lough Swilly was one of the three “Treaty Ports” retained by Britain after the Treaty in 1921. The site is of historic importance, shedding light on the strategic value of Lough Swilly and provides an insight into the defensive thinking of military planners and the skills of military engineers. The emplacements, underground rock-cut stores and shelters and remnant fixtures and mechanisms are of technical interest. The site was returned to Irish control in 1938 and manned by 6th Coastal Battery, Artillery Corps with 120 men being garrisoned here during the Second World War. In 1946 the fort was placed in care and maintenance with only a caretaker present, and finally abandoned in 1952. Originally the battery held three 9.2 inch (233mm) breach loading guns (2 Mk I’s and a Mark IV). Each was mounted on a carriage which recoiled up the inclined plane of the slide on a traversing platform. These were replaced in 1911 by two new Mark X guns with the addition of six 303-inch (7.6mm) Gardner machine-guns on Mk I infantry carriages for landward defence and defence of landing sites.