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Summary

Crab Quay battery first constructed in the C17-C18 and was re-used in the later C19. Searchlight platforms and cranes for submarine mines, and a mine layer's store, were installed in the early C20.

Protected Status

• Scheduled Monument 10552: PENDENNIS PENINSULA FORTIFICATIONS
• Conservation Area: FALMOUTH

Other References/Statuses

• Defence of Britain Project (1995-2003): AH45
• OS No. (OS Quarter-sheet and OS No.): SW83SW 4
• Primary Record No. (1985-2009): 18709.74
• SMR No. (OS Quarter-sheet and SMR No.): SW83SW 19

Monument Type(s):

• BATTERY (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)

Full description

Plans, thought to date to 1700, show a rudimentary platform facing Black Rock at Crab Quay with a small building to the south. This work is believed to have been built to control the landing place to the south. The presence of seven gardens within an enclosure behind the platform might be attributed to continuous manning during the Civil War as an anti-privateer battery. Lilly's survey of 1715 calls it 'Crab Quay Platform' mounting five demi-culverins and once again shows a small building to the south. Lilly recommended that one of these guns was superfluous - perhaps because it crowded the platform reducing ease of traverse of the remainder. The Lilly plan is at a small scale but appears to indicate a walled enclosure with five embrasures to seaward. In an engraving by the Buck brothers of 1734 Crab Quay Platform is depicted as a stone revetted barbette battery mounting six guns. The Buck brothers engraving confirms the continuing presence of the adjacent building shown by Lilly and in the plans of c1700. Later documents call this a guard house presumably guarding Crab Quay rather than the battery.

In 1752 the battery mounted five 18-pdrs in embrasures behind a much thickened parapet perhaps created by the addition of a revetment on the foreshore with an earthen backfill. These alterations perhaps reflect the attention of the engineer Christian Lilly in the 1730s. This was a common improvement seen elsewhere at Falmouth and at Dartmouth Battery in Devon. Colonel Elias Durnford's plan of 1793 shows the parapet returning at an oblique angle at the north end. No changes are evident in the plan of the battery through Ordnance Surveys of 1811 and 1821.

On 14 December 1827 Sir Frederick W Mulcaster instructed the Commanding Engineer Western District, William Morshead, to inspect the work and identify where "guns on traversing carriages or platforms (might be substituted) for those with wheels (with which) the batteries are at present armed." A plan of 1828 showing" the two dependant sea batteries" Half Moon and Crab Quay still records five 18-pdrs mounted
at Crab Quay. Morshead's recommendations have not been found but in 1832 the battery is annotated 'present armament nil' suggesting some change in progress.

Oldfield, reporting on the sea batteries' capacity for self defence, recognised the need "to enclose the works at the rear, to give confidence to the gunners and to prevent their being carried by a small force landing under the rocks who although they would shortly be driven out of the batteries by fire from the place (Pendennis Castle), might spike the guns and destroy the accommodation." Oldfield's report stated that "travelling magazines ...furnaces for heating shot and side arms sheds are required for the advanced batteries at the front towards the sea ... " and urged the Ordnance "to arm ... Crab Quay Battery (with)
two 8 in Millar guns and three 32-pdrs ...; enclosing these batteties with palisading ... Of a loopholed wall or stockade, to provide an expense magazine and artillery store and mobile shot furnaces ... " and to re-establish" a guardroom, near the lime kiln."

Correspondence up to 1853 records much toing and froing and changes of plan. One of Burgoyne's unexecuted suggestions was to make 'cuts' ie ditches between the Elizabethan enceinte and the sea, to prevent landward assault on the sea batteries (no mention is made of the Elizabethan ditches which had served precisely this purpose). No ditches were dug, however, and in March 1853 the battery is described as having once mounted "five 18-pdr guns in embrazures (sic), the guns are in it dismounted, there
are no carriages - the ground platfoms are good." These guns, if the same 18-pdrs mentioned in 1752 reports, were by now at least 100 years old.

A specification and estimate of the work necessary to adapt Crab Quay Battery written on 21 June 1853 neatly summarises the decisions made in the previous seven years. The estimate provides for "enlarging the left embrasure, raising the merlons, revetting with asphalted brickwork, erecting a side arms shed and mounting a dwarf traversing platform for a 32-pdr gun ... the top of the merlons to be finished with sodwork.. a banquette to be formed on either side of the embrasure, with limestone steps bedded on rubble masonry,". It also provided for "erecting an expense magazine and traverse ... "

On 12 April 1853 John Fox Burgoyne wrote to Colonel W Cator, Director General of the Ordnance, confirming his requirements for Crab Quay, as "six 32-pdr guns, of 63 cwt on common garrison carriages and one 32-pdr gun of 63 cwt in the left flank on dwarf traversing platform ... ". Burgoyne finally instructed the Commanding Engineer to proceed with the works on 1 October 1853, giving the reform of the sea battery the highest order of priority. The work almost certainly proceeded during early 1854. The
Ordnance Survey of 1866 shows the battery as it must have looked on completion of these alterations. Of particular interest is the hardstanding, probably for a mobile shot furnace behind the battery, protected by earthen traverses from the expense magazine No 1 in the rear, and a circular hardstanding for a brazier at the south end. The battery appears to have been reached by a cart track from the Castle Drive carriage park on Pendennis Point.

The subsequent development of Crab Quay probably closely follows that of the Grand Sea Battery at St Mawes for which the records have been insepcted. This would suggest rearmament with 64-pdr Rifled Muzzle Loaders in the early 1870s and possibly reuse of the traversing emplacements to mount a 5in breech loading gun in the early 1890s. There may also have been a single 6pdr mounted at Crab Quay prior to the battery of 2 x 6pdrs constructed by 1902.

The minutes of evidence of the Secret Consultative Committee on the Defences of Mercantile Ports, which sat in 1887, contain an interesting snapshot of the Falmouth defences; Crab Quay, it confirmed, had been rearmed with two 64-pdr RMLs in common with Half Moon Battery and the Grand Sea Battery at St Mawes. The Committee recommended the installation of a submarine minefield between Pendennis and St Mawes, supported by two 6pdr quick fire guns at Crab Quay. By 1902 the Battery had been remodelled and the gund installed. The Falmouth Defence Scheme for 1904 records two 6pdr quick fire guns mounted, supported by two machine guns for close defence of the battery. With the completion of the 12pdr batteries in bastions 2 and 3 at Pendennis Castle, the smaller guns at Crab Quay became obsolete and were removed in 1906.

The Ordnance Survey described the battery as 'dismanteld' in 1907 and shows the alterations which had been carried out to create the 6pdr battery. These can be compared with what survives today and an idea gained of the 6pdr infrastructure: the emplacement for traversing carriage of 1854 and the remaining northern half of the battery had been replaced by two concrete platforms with aprons. The alterations almost certainly required the removal of much earlier work and the creation of a sand glacis in front of the aprons to absorb shot. The seaward facing revetment still contains the sills of at least three blocked embrasures from the earlier battery and probably incorporates alling from the C17 battery as well. The battery was enclosed at the north side by a ditch flanked by a small outwork containing an artillery store, which no doubt, would have served as a machine gun nest in the event of an assault from the rear. The side of the work facing Pendennis Point was enclosed by a masonry wall with firing step behind. To the rear of the old shot furnace hardstanding, a filled shell store was built against the back of the 1854 expense magazine No 1 and the interior of the latter was fitted out with steel racking to serve as an ordinary shell store. Opposite the door to the expense magazine, steps led down to a new subterranean cartridge store, the plan of which closely resembles that of the subterranean store of the same date behind the Grand Sea Battery at St Mawes Caslte. The remaining embrasures of the old battery were probably blocked up during these alterations (22).

Searchlight platforms and cranes for submarine mines, and a mine layer's store, were installed in the early 20th century. (b21) - Johnson, ND, 1990, Pers Comm.

The battery was once again altered during World War Two to mount two 3-pdr anti-motor torpedo boat guns, complimented by an identical arrangement at St Anthony Steps. The re-activation of the battery in World War Two may account for blockwork sub-divisions within the early C20 cartridge store. The D-shaped holdfasts for these weapons remain on the platforms. One of these same platforms was planted with a picnic table in the 1970s, however the table has now been removed.

Recent excavation in the glacis revealed the redundant power cables which had served the searchlight emplacements below (22).

--------------------------------
Site history:
1: 1927. DRAKE,S/IAM
3: 1987. WESTON,SM/IAM
4: 1988. HARTGROVES,S/CAU
5: 1988. HARTGROVES,S/CAU
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<1> Hals, W, 1740, The Compleat History of Cornwall, 129 (Bibliographic reference). SCO3429.

<2> Lilly, C, 1715, An Exact Plan of Pendennis Fort (Bibliographic reference). SCO3870.

<3> Norden, J, 1728, Speculi Britanniae Pars (Bibliographic reference). SCO4001.

<4> Polwhele, R, 1803, History of Cornwall (Bibliographic reference). SCO4140.

<5> Lysons, D & S, 1814, Magna Britannia, VOL III, CORNWALL, 98, 99, 104 (Bibliographic reference). SCO3885.

<6> Hitchins, F & Drew, S (Eds), 1824, The History of Cornwall (Bibliographic reference). SCO3595.

<7> TREGONNING HOOPER, 1827, UNKNOWN TITLE, VOL 1, NO 6, 7-9 (Unedited Source). SCO5851.

<8> Thomas, R, 1827, History and Description of the Town and Harbour of Falmouth, 110-113 (Bibliographic reference). SCO4698.

<9> Thomas, R, 1851, Letters to the West Briton (Article in newspaper). SCO4699.

<10> Brine, F, 1855, Shilling Trip to Falmouth (Bibliographic reference). SCO2906.

<11> Pasfield Oliver, S, 1875, Pendennis and St Mawes (Bibliographic reference). SCO4086.

<12> Beckett, R, 1961, Tercenteniary of Falmouth (Bibliographic reference). SCO2815.

<13> UNKNOWN, 1963, MOW GUIDE (Unedited Source). SCO7885.

<14> Carew, R, 1969, The Survey of Cornwall 1602 (Bibliographic reference). SCO3044.

<15> Institute Of Cornish Studies, 1987, Place-Names Index (Bibliographic reference). SCO3621.

<16> Padel, OJ, 1985, Cornish Place-Name Elements, 85, 177-180 (Bibliographic reference). SCO4064.

<17> Hartgroves, S & Sharpe, A & Roberts, C, 1985, Pendennis Castle and the Headland, Falmouth (Cornwall Event Report). SCO3459.

<18> Morley, B, 1988, The Castles of Pendennis and St Mawes (Bibliographic reference). SCO3957.

<19> Sharpe, A, 1989, Pendinas Castle (Cornwall Event Report). SCO4367.

<20> Walker, R, 1989, Pendennis Castle Resistivity Survey 1989 (Bibliographic reference). SCO5007.

<22> Linzey, R, 2000, Fortress Falmouth. An conservation plan for the historic defences of Falmouth Haven Vol II (2000), site U2.1 (Cornwall Event Report). SCO1563.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events: none recorded

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