Monument Number 1548006 |
| Hob Uid: 1548006 | |
Location :
Kent
Gravesham
Shorne
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| Grid Ref : TQ6913474816 |
| Summary : One of a pair of Second World War coastal artillery searchlights located immediately to the north-west of Shornemead Fort on the sea wall. They are thought to date from c.1900, finally falling out of use following the Second World War. This was a rectangular concrete structure approximately 4.5m x 3.5m with a flat roof and an open horizontal slit opening (facing north-east) onto the river. The lights were sited to provide illumination for the boom defence battery which was locatate 200 m east of the fort. Each housed a carbon arc searchlight powered by a generator plant to the rear. A sliding metal shutter facing the river opened could be used to protect the searchlight. They may have continued to assist the Second World War emergency battery east of the fort as they are shown still existing in an aerial photograph of 1946. They were demolished after the war (still visible on photographs taken in1953), possibly during improvement of the river flood defence bank.The second searchlight was situated c.25m to the west. During the Second World War both searchlights sat immediately outside the barbed wire entanglement which encircled the fort and associated wartime military installations and D-Day embarkation hard at Shornemead Fort. |
More information : One of a pair of Second World War coastal artillery searchlights located at TQ 6913 7482 immediately to the north-west of Shornemead Fort on the sea wall. They are thought to date from c.1900, finally falling out of use following the Second World War. This was a rectangular concrete structure approximately 4.5m x 3.5m with a flat roof and an open horizontal slit opening (facing north-east) onto the river.
The lights were sited to provide illumination for the boom defence battery which was locatate 200 m east of the fort. Each housed a carbon arc searchlight powered by a generator plant to the rear. A sliding metal shutter facing the river opened could be used to protect the searchlight. They may have continued to assist the Second World War emergency battery east of the fort as they are shown still existing in an aerial photograph of 1946. They were demolished after the war (still visible on photographs taken in1953), possibly during improvement of the river flood defence bank.
The second searchlight was situated c.25m to the west. During the Second World War both searchlights sat immediately outside the barbed wire entanglement which encircled the fort and associated wartime military installations and D-Day embarkation hard at Shornemead Fort. These features were all mapped from historic RAF aerial photographs as part of the English Heritage: Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project. (1-2)
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