More information : Shoebury Garrison and the experimental ranges were established in the mid C19. Running down the coast to the south of the town are various batteries and associated military structures, several of them listed. This particular gun pit is said to date from 1885. It is thought to have been used in 1885 in the first experiments in high-angled fire took place here using a modified rifled muzzle-loading gun (RML) that led subsequently to high-angled batteries being installed in Britain and overseas.
The structure is a gun pit with a semi-circular wall. This has four recesses in it, each containing a ring set into the concrete. At each side of the pit the lower supports for the davits, used to lift shells up to the parapet from where the gun was loaded, remain in place. Each side of the pit incorporates steps used to access the parapet. To the left of the pit is a concrete wall with two recesses where the dials to transmit firing data and the firing plug were located.
Here, evidence of the gun and associated fittings has been almost entirely lost and the largely irreversible encasing of the gun pit in a later building has removed the essential characteristic of it being open to the target area and, therefore, its setting. The interest of the structure, or any group value with other military assets in the area, does not, from evidence to hand, compensate for these changes. (1)
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