Modern gun battery.


A gun battery was constructed on Douglas Head in early 1797, 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.


The Douglas Head battery was designed to accommodate two guns, which are still present in a subsequent inventory of 1803, although the platform on which they were stood was considered unserviceable.


In 1813 work commenced on new batteries around the Island's coast, and the Douglas Head site was completed in 1815. By 1821 this had been re-equipped with two new cannon mounted on traversing rails. These guns were amongst the few left in place when the Island was otherwise stripped of its ordnance in 1822. Part of the parapet of the gun emplacement, a barbette of similar design to that constructed at Peel Castle, is still present.


This battery was in turn superceded by the construction of a replacement slightly to the east in 1861, the earthwork parapet of which is that shown on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1867-8. The battery is variously described as being armed with two or four guns, and its timber construction to resemble the deck of a warship. An undated photograph in the Manx National Heritage collections (pg/7888/58) shows part of the battery with three cannon present; the walls of the older barbette are apparent in the background.


The battery was soon rendered obsolete by advances in naval gunnery, and from 1870 the local gunners received their training in Liverpool.