Archcliffe Gate

& St. Martin's Flank Rifle Galleries

LEFT: Archcliffe Gate by John Peverley, 1950's. RIGHT: The same view, September 2000

Archcliffe Gate was the main entrance to the Western Heights from the west via South Military Road.  The defensive ditch that passes below the road bridge above, ran down to the cliff edge and now terminates above Hammond's garage on Limekiln Street.  It is the section of ditch that the Royal Military Hospital sally port cuts across.

As you can see, the Archcliffe Gate was a splendid piece of architecture and dates from around 1864.  It was sadly demolished in 1963 to make the road wider in order to cater for planned industrial expansion.  The only industry that ever benefited from this is the car repair garage which is housed in one of the old buildings. 

The above view is looking north-east through to the site of the more recent St. Martin's Battery car park.

 It would seem reasonable to assume that the Archcliffe Gate and adjacent structures were simply bull-dozed into the ditch.  This would  be the easiest and cheapest way of getting rid of it.  The ditch infill is littered with broken bricks, lumps of concrete and bits of rubble. 

Following the infill of the ditch, the road was widened and raised.  The only structure to survive this demolition was the system of rifle galleries to the north west.  These remain largely intact although they are in a terrible state of disrepair.  

Two of the surviving loopholes, now partly buried due to the road height being raised

The surrounding area is now covered by dense woodland and as a consequence the outside scarp walls of the rifle galleries are subject to heavy vandalism.  The system of passages and rifle galleries are alas, not accessible.

The above orifices were all designed to help the inevitable, thick gun smoke vent out of the galleries.  The two pictures on the left illustrate how badly people want to get in to the structure to explore, with zero regard for the building itself.  There is no way in; We have surveyed these walls and they are 4 feet thick ! The picture on the right just shows mindless vandalism.  The clay vent pipe is no more than 10 inches in diameter.  

The above holes are actually at the top of each respective gunroom and gallery, the ground level on the outside now being much higher since infilling.

The only entrance now to the gun rooms and is blocked up.  

This entrance door is round the corner in Citadel Road and is obviously a WW2 structure.  Is it on the site of an earlier entrance ?

As stated above, there is no way into these galleries, all access points having been sealed in the 1980's with four feet of solid concrete.  However, we do have a plan of the building and a series of photographs of inside which were taken when the building was open.