Monument record TQ 87 NE 1026 - Remains of Grain Battery, Isle of Grain

Defensive earthwork. Nothing marked on any OS mapping. Recorded evidence from survey (1).

Site photographs (2-4).

Constructed between 1900-1901 as a practice battery, Grain Battery was sited south-west of Grain Fort (TQ 87 NE 8] . Despite the existing fortifications on Grain and at Sheerness, the defence of the Medway estuary was of such importance that Grain Battery was added to the existing Grain fortifications. Armed with four guns it was also provided with a magazines, shelters, a command post and direction finding equipment. One gun was removed in 1918. It was disarmed in 1935-6. The military abandoned the site in 1956. As with the Wing Battery (TQ 87 NE 9), the emplacements were filled in and the magazines sealed between 1961 and 1966. The field survey reports that the battery was constructed as a long earthen mound, with four gun emplacements on the terreplein. A ditch surrounded the front and ends of the mound with an unclimable fence. The mound had a vertical rear face with access to the emplacements, magazines, stores and shelters (underneath the mound and service road). The remains of the mound and ditch are still visible, along with signs of the emplacements [5].

Mentioned in Isle of Grain Historic Area Assessment conducted by English Heritage in 2014. Built in 1900-1901, the third of three batteries built around Grain Fort, and "designed for faster-firing less conspicuous guns" (6).

Description from record TQ 87 NE 1085:
Earthworks a and concrete aprons remaining, rear works destroyed.
Owner : Public
Publicly accessible : Yes
How accessed for survey : Public open space.
Tourism Potential : Yes, as part of Grain heritage trail.
Condition : moderate
Date of visit : 14/01/07

TQ 889 764
Earthen battery built in 1901 and armed with four 6-inch BL guns, with magazines and troop shelters below and a battery observation post behind. By 1918 one of the guns had been replaced by an anti-aircraft gun, and the remaining guns were removed between 1921 and 1935, after which the battery fell out of use.

The buildings were removed, the emplacements filled in and made safe after 1961. Today the battery survives as a simple earthen bank with a ditch on the seaward side, and traces of concrete mark the gun positions.

Grain Battery was surveyed by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England between March and April 1998, following a request by Kent County Council and as part of a European project looking at similar sites in Kent, Nord-Pas de Calais and West Flanders. See archive report and plans. (1-2)

Grain Battery located at TQ 890 763. It was opened in 1900 and by December 1902 was equipped with four 6-inch breech-loading Mk. VII guns. By the First World War one of the guns had been removed and it is referenced as being armed up until 1927. (7-8)

Aerial photography from 1975 shows that the emplacements had been filled in and the area was in an overgrown and poor condition. The area to the rear of the emplacements has been substantially altered. (9)

The earthwork and structural remains of the battery described by the previous authorities were seen at TQ8897 7641 and were mapped from aerial photographs as part of the English Heritage: Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project. Aerial photographs of the site taken in 1942 show the entire battery surrounded by barbed wire, with a second line reinforcing the battery on the seaward side. This barbed wire formed part of the extensive network of barbed wire obstruction extending across and between the earlier forts and batteries along this part of the coast of the Isle of Grain. (10)

Historic England archive material (11)

Historic England, Archive material associated with Coastal Artillery Fortifications on the Isle of Grain (Archive). SKE58573.

War Department., 01/01/1909, Medway defence scheme. (Collection). SKE14372.

War Department., 01/01/1909, Medway defence scheme. (Collection). Ske14372.

MMRG, 07/01/14, Grain Battery (Photograph). SKE14630.

MMRG, 07/01/14, Grain Battery (Photograph). Ske14630.

<1> Kent County Council, 1999, Survey of Kent post-1500 defence sites, KD92 (Index). SWX11828.

<2> 1942, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX10000.

<3> 1942, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX9998.

<4> 1946, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX9555.

<5> RCHME, 1998, Coastal Artillery Fortifications on the Isle of Grain, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE12515.

<6> English Heritage, 2014, Isle of Grain, Hoo Peninsula, Kent: Historic area assessment (Monograph). SKE29397.

<7> Kent Defence Research Group, c. 1993, Kent Defence Research Group 'Fort Logs' (Unpublished document). SKE52251.