Kitchener Battery is one of the Tyne Turrets built between 1917 and 1921. They were built as a result of the German bombardment of Scarborough in December 1914 but they were not completed until September 1921. The second Tyne Turret was Roberts Battery at Hartley to the North of Tynemouth.
Kitchener Battery lies to the South of Tynemouth and is a self contained coastal battery with a single 12-inch Mark VIII Naval gun in a turret. The turret was obtained from the 1898 pre-dreadnaught, HMS Illustrious. The gun and its turret were above ground while the magazines, engine room and associated buildings were all buried 26.5 feet underground. In many ways these batteries were very similar to the 15-inch gun Batteries built by Armstrong for the coastal defence of Corunna, Cartagena and other Spanish harbours during the interwar years. The British did not built many coastal defence batteries with turrets in the United Kingdom, the Dover Turret being one exception to this rule.
The site has been destroyed by surface quarrying at the location.
The images are of Dep Buque Turret in Spain. This double 12-inch BL gun turret covers the Eastern approaches to Cadiz. As with the Tyne Turrets, this emplacement has all the magazines and ancillary building underground below the turret.
Although “out of period”, this battery is included for the sake of completeness and its link to the Spanish Batteries.