Blast from past at Tynemouth Priory and Castle

Apr 29 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A LANDMARK heritage site launched its latest blast from the past yesterday.

The gun battery and magazine where ammunition was stored during the two world wars at Tynemouth Priory and Castle has been refurbished in a year-long £80,000 operation by English Heritage.

The feature will be open to visitors from today as part of the Life in the Stronghold exhibition which tells the story of the 2,000 year-history of the headland site.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries Tynemouth Castle was used as a coastal gun battery in response to threats of a French invasion. The current battery was commissioned in 1904 and was operational during the First and Second World Wars.

Visitors can now explore the space in which the battery unit of around a dozen soldiers worked.

The complex includes the shell store and hoists to the guns, the separate cartridge store and the clean room between the two chambers where the soldiers changed into special magazine clothes before handling the explosive cartridges. English Heritage Tynemouth site supervisor Stephen Laidler said: “The Tyne was an important river and the battery’s job was to protect the river mouth.”

It also acted as the command centre for most of the North East coast defences.

The conservation work at Tynemouth forms part of a series of projects which are repairing, interpreting and enhancing the 20th Century military heritage along the North East coastline.

Work is currently under way at Blyth Battery in Northumberland supported by a package of funding including an English Heritage grant of more than £120,000 and the Heugh Battery Trust in Hartlepool – which was attacked by German warships in the First World War – has major plans for repair and interpretation. Tynemouth featured two six-inch naval guns with a range of eight miles, a 9.2-inch gin with a 12-mile range and an “interrogation” gun used to fire shots across the bows of ships which entered the river without flying the correct identification flag.

Rob Flower, North East head of visitor operations, said: “Tynemouth Priory and Castle is a well known Christian heritage site but the role it has played in defending the North East coast over the years should not be forgotten.”