Modern gun battery.


A gun battery was first 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.


Work on its replacement commenced in 1813 and was completed two years later, the earlier structure having been condemned as unserviceable in 1803. By 1821 the battery 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; the western half has been destroyed by quarrying.


An undated photograph in the Manx National Heritage collections (pg/7888/58) shows the walls of the older barbette in the background, with the new battery, commissioned to replace it in 1861, in the foreground.