Upper Sower Coastal Battery N of, Clestrain Orphir, Scotland

Text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument is a coastal artillery battery built in 1915 and in use until 1918. The battery complex covers an area of 1.7 hectares. It comprises four concrete gun emplacements, a magazine with connecting trenches and banks, and the concrete bases of an accommodation camp and engine house or searchlight hut. The battery was sited to protect the western approach to Scapa Flow through Clestrain Sound and has good views to the N, W and S, overlooking Clestrain Sound to the island of Graemsay and Hoy Sound. It is situated 300m inland from the coast at around 15m above OD.

The four gun emplacements face W and are arranged in a line over a distance of about 60m N-S. They each measure 8.7m internally within concrete walls about 0.7m thick. All four emplacements are of open barbette type with chamfered edges to the parapets. The N emplacement has a ready-use ammunition locker, while the other three all have bolt holes to attach the lockers. A double-ended magazine is situated around 24m to the E and was safely accessed from the gun emplacements by two curving trenches which are still visible. The magazine measures 14m by 11.7m and is half-buried, with the entrances visible in the N and S. Associated features include a large rampart-type feature running along the front of the emplacements and, to the rear, the footings of two buildings probably representing the accommodation block and engine house or searchlight hut.

The scheduled area is irregular on plan to include the remains described above and an area around them within which evidence relating to the monument's construction, use and abandonment is expected to survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map.