Modern gun battery.


A gun battery was constructed near Ballaquayle stream in 1793, as part of a wider response to the threat posed by foreign privateers to the Island's coastline and its shipping.


The battery appears to have been designed as one of several placed around Douglas Bay to provide interlocking fields of fire from one end of the bay to the other.


It is not clear how many guns the Ballaquayle battery was designed to accommodate, nor whether they were ever mounted, as the site is not mentioned in a subsequent inventory of 1803.


Curphey places the Ballaquayle battery on the south side of the stream (which is now largely culverted underground) approximately at the grid reference provided. There is no sign of earthworks in the area now, which is mostly occupied by a modern bowling green.