Historic artillery battery on Middle Hill within Gibraltar’s Upper Rock reserve.
Middle Hill Battery is an artillery battery on Middle Hill in Gibraltar’s Upper Rock Nature Reserve, south of Green’s Lodge and Rock Gun batteries. First armed with a single gun in 1727, it later carried six 10‑inch rifled muzzle‑loading guns and a Second World War Bofors anti‑aircraft gun.
Middle Hill Battery is a historic artillery battery in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It stands on Middle Hill at the northeastern end of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, just south of Green’s Lodge Battery and Rock Gun Battery, and is reached on foot via the Middle Hill Nature Trail along Rock Gun Road. A single gun was mounted at the battery in 1727. During the eighteenth century guards were regularly posted there, partly to prevent desertions down the neighbouring cliff, including at least one attempt by a guard himself. In January 1783 sparks ignited ammunition in one of the battery buildings, destroying the guardhouse and part of the wall and injuring several guards, but the damage was quickly repaired. In 1859 there was still only one cannon. By 1900 the site carried six 10‑inch rifled muzzle‑loading guns in two rows of three, in a sunken concrete battery with a range of about 9,000 yards aimed at emplacements in Spain. Nearby buildings included the Nursery Hut barrack and the Middle Hill Group on the cliff edge. By the Second World War a Bofors anti‑aircraft gun had been installed. After the war the area became a Ministry of Defence aerial farm, before transfer to the Government of Gibraltar in 2005; it is now managed by the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society.
