A couple of miles along the south west coast path from Kingswear towards Brixham there’s a piece of Devon’s wartime history that contains what must be Devon’s shortest railway. The narrow-gauge double track at Brownstone Battery near Froward Head is around 30 metres long. It was built to transport shells from the magazine to the guns high on the cliff overlooking the mouth of the River Dart. The trucks containing the 90lb shells freewheeled down the slope with gears controlling their speed. An engine and pulley system worked a cable to haul the ammunition trucks back up the steep incline.
Brownstone Battery was built in July 1940 and is one of seven emergency gun emplacements from the second world war that survive out of more than one hundred constructed. It was well camouflaged as it was built in a wood of Monteray and Corsican Pines planted in 1904. It was designed as a “close defence site” to defend Dartmouth that was an important naval base with its repair facilities and motor torpedo boats.
The two six-inch guns at Brownstone came from an old-world war one battleship and had a range of 14 miles. They were directed from the battery observation post which would have had range finders to calculate the position of enemy ships. Instructions were conveyed to the gun crews by tannoy. The guns could engage any enemy forces such as landing craft and other naval vessels attempting landings on Slapton Sands or Blackpool Sands on the other side of the Dart Estuary. It was also well placed to destroy any beachhead that may have been established.
Up to 300 men could be stationed at Brownstone – each gun having a crew of 13 working shifts. The 52nd Bedfordshire Yeomanry Regiment Royal Artillery was there for the first two years of operation but in 1943 it thought the Home Guard took over the site as American Forces moved into the area in the run up to D Day. As well as the guns there were two searchlights on lower platforms each with a crew of 5 men. Below the lights the cliffs were covered in barbed wire.
The site was decommissioned in 1956 and the guns taken to Plymouth for scrapping. The area taken over by the National Trust 25 years later. Today you can still see parts of the gun beds, magazines, searchlights platforms and sunken walkways. Today the battery observation post is let by the trust to the National Coastwatch Institution, known as NCI Froward Point, and manned by volunteer watchkeepers keeping a lookout for coastal dangers. The Nissen huts that accommodated the soldiers have been removed. A team of rangers work to keep the scrub at bay and create a good habitat for wildflowers, butterflies and rare birds such as cirl buntings. Sheep and pony grazing help with this. The large generator store has been colonised by lesser horseshoe bats.