Buena Vista Battery was an

artillery battery In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to fac ...

near the Buena Vista Barracks at the southern end of the

British Overseas Territory The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remna ...

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gib ...

. It is located on a slight ridge in front of the nearby Buena Vista Barracks, which was once the base of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment.

Description

The area of the battery and barracks was originally used as a lookout post with an attached guardroom, which had to be rebuilt in the 1760s after falling into ruin. At the time the shoreline below was considered to be unassailable, as it was swept by strong currents. The lookout was subsequently converted into an artillery battery intended to protect

Camp Bay The Bay of Isles is a bay wide and receding , lying between Cape Buller and Cape Wilson along the north coast of South Georgia. It was discovered in 1775 by a British expedition under James Cook and so named by him because numerous islands (at ...

from surprise attacks. By 1834 it had two

howitzer A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...

s and two 32-pdrs (14.5 kg), but these were removed by 1859. A rifled muzzle loader (RML) in an open iron shielded emplacement was installed in 1872, and in 1896 two additional emplacements were added to house two QF 12-pdr (5.4 kg) 12 cwt (610 kg) Mark I guns. Two 12-pdr QF guns on cone mountings were installed in 1902. In October 1940, during the Second World War, a naval gun was installed on the battery. The adjoining barracks was constructed in the 1840s to the designs of Major General Sir John Thomas Jones; it was one of several that were built in the territory following a report that he produced on Gibraltar's defences (see also Defensible Barracks and

Retrenched Barracks The Retrenched Barracks was a fortified barracks located at Windmill Hill in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It stands to the north of the southern tip of Gibraltar, Europa Point, which was long felt to be potentially vulnerable to a ...

). Also known as the "Stone Block", its simple design consisted of a single rectangular block with windows on each side, divided into two sections on each floor with three wide intercommunicating rooms in each section. It was used for many years by the Royal Gibraltar Regiment but was subsequently converted for commercial use as factory and storage units.

Battery and barracks today

The Government of Gibraltar has designated Buena Vista Battery as a Class A listed building under the Gibraltar Heritage Trust Act of 1989. The ownership of buildings associated with Buena Vista passed from the UK

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

ownership to the Government of Gibraltar in 2011. The agreement swapped over 300 MOD houses and flats with the Government of Gibraltar and in exchange they agreed to build 90 new houses on remaining MOD land. The site is now being re-developed for residential use but the developers intend to retain, restore and preserve the barracks and the gun emplacements. The fifteen residences were said to sell for between one and two million pounds.Buena Vista Park Villas launched
, GBC, September 2012, accessed 1 April 2013

References

{{Fortifications of Gibraltar Batteries in Gibraltar Barracks in Gibraltar