Ness Battery

A trip over to Stromness today to visit the Ness Battery. An amazing place, used during the first and second world wars, it is the most complete gun battery in Britain, their web site tells it all!

Our guide, Andy, showed us around and explained the whole lay out of the camp, where soldiers would sleep, eat, garden but most importantly the huge gun emplacements with their searchlights, guarding the entrance to Scapa Flow.

Incredibly there is no vandalism, lots of rust, but so much remains that you can get a real feeling for the place, of what it must have been like to be on watch, looking over the Sound to Hoy, ready to fire should any ships be spotted trying to sneak in.

We were there to hand over some letters, written to a soldier based in Orkney during WWII, which I've had since 1978 and have never got round to investigating further. Hopefully Andy will find them useful and may be able to display them at some point in the future.