| Summary : A large gun battery built between 1898 and 1901 as part of the defensive system designed to protect a naval signalling and re-fuelling station then being established on the Isles of Scilly. The battery's forward flank faces SSW, its field of fire commanding the deep water approach through St Mary's Sound. It has two concrete emplacements for 6-inch breech loading MK VII calibre guns set into the rear of a rampart, behind which is a parade area called a terreplein. Beneath the emplacements are an underground brick-vaulted magazine and war shelter. These structures retain their original plan, though most original internal fittings, doors and joinery have been removed from areas still accessible. The terreplein contains a raised platform containing a communications room, the Battery Commander's Position and a slender concrete post which formerly supported Watkin's depression range-finder slighting equipment. The battery's emplacements, magazine and terreplein structures are built within extensive low profile earthworks to protect them from incoming fire and ground approach. During the construction of these defences, national defence policy underwent a radical shift with the Germans and not the French now being the dominant threat. As a result the Isles of Scilly was abandoned as a naval station and in 1906 the battery's guns were dismantled and removed for storage in Falmouth. During World War II, a homing beacon was installed on the Woolpack Battery to guide anti-submarine aircraft returning from patrol to airfields in south west England. It is in this regard that two raised concrete mast bases were added, one on each apron of the emplacements. Each mast base is visible as a raised cross with an enlarged square centre and transverse terminals. One of the magazine's cartridge or shell stores was also used as a barracks for Royal Canadian Air Force personnel. Scheduled. |