What is recorded here

Half Moon of Five Gun Battery stood on the South Wall in 1793 with five heavy guns aimed at the river channel and Poolbeg water. The state built it to stop ships passing that stretch of coast. The guns are gone now, but the wall remains beside a swimming-place where people still enter the sea the battery once threatened.

In 1793 the Board of Ordnance built a battery on the South Wall, c. 800m from the Poolbeg lighthouse. It was armed with five 24-pounder guns and it controlled the channel of the river and the water around the Poolbeg lighthouse. The battery was subsequently dismantled and the site is used as a swimming-place (De Courcy 1996, 185). Kerrigan (1995, 176-7) described this fortification as follows; 'Two other elements in the line of coastal defence in Dublin Bay were the Pigeon House Fort [DU019-027----] and the nearby Half Moon or Five Gun battery. Some distance east of the Pigeon House on the South Wall was the Half Moon Battery, evidently constructed in the mid-1790s, providing some defence of the port or Dublin and Sandymount Strand to the south. An addition was made to the battery in 1795. Part of the structure survives, but not enough to establish how the guns were arranged'. See attached Taylor's Map showing the location of the Battery. Taylor, J. 1816 Taylor's map of the environs of Dublin: extending 10 to 14 miles from the castle, by actual survey, on a scale of 2 inches to one mile. Photo © Peter Gerken (cc-by-sa/2.0) Compiled by: Geraldine Stout Revised by: Caimin O'Brien Date of revised upload: 25 January 2023

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