Early twentieth-century artillery battery on Gibraltar’s Upper Rock Nature Reserve.
Spur Battery is an artillery battery within the Fortifications of Gibraltar, in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Located on St. George’s Spur at the southern end of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, it mounted a 9.2-inch Mark X breech-loading gun installed in 1902 and later transferred to Imperial War Museum Duxford.
Spur Battery is an artillery battery that forms part of the Fortifications of Gibraltar, in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. It stands in the Upper Battery area at the southern end of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, on St. George’s Spur, southwest of O’Hara’s Battery and near Lord Airey’s Battery, at the terminus of Spur Battery Road. A 9.2-inch Mark X breech‑loading gun was mounted on the emplacement in 1902, during a wider programme that saw 9.2‑inch guns installed on numerous Gibraltar batteries. By 1914 there were fourteen such guns on twelve batteries. The Spur Battery gun was fired in World War I on 31 December 1915 against German submarines off Gibraltar, when three rounds were discharged from the battery. After World War I the gun barrel was upgraded, and in 1935 the mounting was changed from Mark V to Mark VII, increasing armour, modernising controls, and improving loading, elevation, and traverse. The combined weight of gun and mounting was 204 tons, with a 28‑ton barrel; shells weighed 380 pounds, with 109‑pound charges, giving a 2,700 ft/sec muzzle velocity and 29,600‑yard range. In 1981 the gun was dismantled and transferred for preservation to the Imperial War Museum Duxford in England, in an operation known as Project Vitello.
