I have been to.. Eastney Battery West

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..   more fort archeology...  😏

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As I mentioned in the last post I've been doing a bit of volunteer work with the Palmerston Forts Society clearing brambles/weeds and vegetation from the western end of the Hilsea Lines..  but for one reason or another this was not possible this week as the field was being used, so access wasn't possible - but faced with a band of old men armed with secateurs "desperate" for work it would take a brave organiser  to turn down the opportunity to get some other work done instead, and so it was that I finally got to visit one of the two "fort'lets", or batteries, built at the front of the old Royal Marine Barracks on Southsea seafront...

By way of giving you some perspective though, this is the general topology..

North is top..  Solent is the water you see..  Gunners Row/Clocktower Drive is the old marine barracks building, now repurposed as very lovely apartments (the views are stunning)..  note too, the two batteries East and West, originally there would have been a rampart with parapet and covered way running between the two of them roughly along the line of the road (long gone, mostly removed in WW2 the remaining bit can be seen just north of the car park by The Yomper))..  my work spot for the day though was the west battery..

As this is private ground (it's purpose now is an enclosed garden for the apartments) I've limited the number of photo's to those I can find on the web, as quite rightly, I have no interest in encouraging any incursions/trespass as a result of showing in detail what a quite fantastic place it is..  if I had one of those apartments, I'd have a chair in there every day with tea and book at hand..😁  ...it's a glorious spot..  which funnily enough is one of the reasons why the battery is so well preserved to this day, as it became the private garden of the Major-General of Royal Marine Artillery after the forts were disarmed around 1907 - he lived in what are now the apartments at the west end of Clocktower Drive

"Crinoline Gardens"...   snigger... 😁Yellow lines are Carnot Walls and Caponiers - see later for a definition of what each is - still there but under 10 feet of soil

Anyway - a little history..

• the two battery's were built between 1861 & 1863 for the sum of £17,435 (roughly £2.8M in todays money according to Google) and are identical, but mirror imaged
• Each had a dry moat to the front and sides, with small Caponiers [clicky]  and Carnot walls [clicky] to cover the side ditches - fort-speak .. it's like a fascinating different language 😏. The rear (known in fortification terms as the Gorge) was covered by a loopholed wall three feet thick, and it has a central gate. The front face had embrasures for larger guns, with the main magazine under the south west position (the one with the ramp)..
• They were commissioned as a result of the Royal Commission in 1859 that also lead to the development of the other forts surrounding Portsmouth, so were considered an integral part of the overall defence plan. They were designed to protect the approach to Langstone Harbour and the sea to the east of Horse Sand Fort (in the Solent)
• The earliest record of the armaments at the forts dates from 1869 when it was stated that each had five 7-inch rifled breech loading guns and seven 8-inch smooth bore guns.
• By the 1890s, the fort had been upgraded to four 64 pounder 58cwt rifled muzzle loading guns with ranges up to 3,500 yards
• The 64 pounders were removed around 1900 and replaced by a single 6-inch Mark IV breech loading guns on hydro-pneumatic carriages which had a range of 8,800 yards - these were a variation of the Moncrief mounting I mentioned previously, but in this case the guns also had an armoured roof to protect the gunners from shrapnel (presumably) and the guns would rise up through a slot in the roof which would have been flush with the top of the concrete surround - two of the 64 pounder positions were converted to Maxim machine gun emplacements. 
• The fort was decommissioned in 1907 before the plans to install a second 6-inch Mark IV breech loading guns on hydro-pneumatic carriage was completed. 

West facing rampart of the West Battery (photo Charles Taylor) - as it happens this was where I was working for the day - happy to advise that that big bush is no more.. 😎

...and with the help of Google Earth - here's some detail - following is the view from the rear... note..

• yellow circle is the disappearing gun position
• the magazine is under the position with the ramp
• the red circle is the Maxim gun positions
• blue line marks far side of ditch
• green line is the Carnot wall which would also have had a ditch behind it to allow soldiers to deploy and fire through loopholes in the Carnot wall and into the ditch

"Crinoline Row" ...snigger...

following is the view from the front/south west... note..

• yellow shading is the ditch
• purple line is the caponier position - the other side would have been protected by the rampart between the two battery's I think..
• orange shading are the two mini bastions - which were loopholed to allow firing into the ditch - they were accessed through gates into the space behind the Carnot wall allowing men to deploy where they were most needed
• red lines are the Carnot walls which would also have had an open space behind (shaded blue) to allow soldiers to deploy and fire through loopholes in the Carnot wall and into the ditch - the Carnot along the front face is far clearer

Following is a picture from the East Battery which overall is in a far worse condition than the West one as a result of first, not being a Major Generals garden, and second, having been handed over to the Royal Navy to use and abuse as they wished for a large number of years -😏- but despite that, it shows some features that have now disappeared under soil on the West Battery..  specifically following - the Carnot Wall and Caponier (at the end of the ditch) can be seen far more clearly, but look at that curved brickwork.. it's stunning workmanship.

Caponier and Carnot wall... this is the East Battery but the West would have been the same before they filled in on both sides of  the Carnot

More stuff:

• EASTNEY BATTERIES
• Eastney Battery East - Portsmouth - TracesOfWar.com

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...