Entrance to the Heugh Battery, Hartlepool Headland
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Description
"The Heugh Gun Battery was constructed in the 1860's to augment the fire power of the 1750's East or Lighthouse Battery. Both Batteries' guns were upgraded prior to WW1 to 6 inch Mk VII breech-loading guns capable of firing a 100lb shell some 12,000 yards. They gave valiant returning fire during the Bombardment by three German Battle Cruisers (Seydlitz, Moltke and Blucher on 16th December 1914. Over 1500 shells were fired on the twin towns of Hartlepool and West Hartlepool, and near this point the first soldier was killed on British soil during enemy action. About 130 were killed and 600 injured. The Heugh and Lighthouse Batteries between them fired 143 shells in retaliation causing damage to the ships, killing around 80 German sailors and injuring 217. All the North-East coastal batteries were disbanded in October 1956. The Heugh Battery is a Scheduled Monument and is open to the public as a Gun Battery Museum with several examples of WW1 and WW2 artillery piece" Photo by Andrew Curtis, 2011, and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. -
Owner
Geograph.org.uk -
Source
Geograph (Geograph) -
License
What does this mean? Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Further information
Link: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1608024
Resource type: Text/Website
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 8 years ago
Viewed: 1157 times
Picture Taken: Unknown -
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