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.


The precise location of this battery is unknown, and it was replaced in 1815.