Qualla: Mount Batten

Mount Batten: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trysca, Public domain. Three thousand years ago, this small lump of rock on the eastern edge of Plymouth Sound was already doing business with the continent. Iron Age and Roman traders brought wine, pottery, and metal goods across the Channel and offloaded them here, on a 600-metre peninsula tipped by a 24-metre outcrop. So much continental commerce flowed through Mount Batten that some classical scholars have wondered whether this might be the trading centre Diodorus Siculus called "Ictis," or the harbour Ptolemy listed as "Tamaris" in his Geographia. Three exquisite British-made bronze mirrors were excavated here, evidence of a sophisticated local culture that minted its own influence. The mirrors are gone now, lost when German bombs hit Plymouth's museum during the Blitz. The rock, the peninsula, and the history are still here.

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Image: Trysca | Public domain

Mount Batten: How Stert, Then Mount Batten

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MJ Keane, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before it was named after Sir William Batten, the seventeenth-century MP and Surveyor of the Navy, the peninsula was called How Stert. It served as a useful defensive position throughout the late Middle Ages because it commanded a clean field of fire across the Cattewater, the ch...

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Image: MJ Keane | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Batten: The Quarrying Decades

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Declutter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1839 and the mid-1860s, the quarrymen came. Mount Batten's stone was needed for the great steam yards being built at HM Naval Base Devonport, and the appetite for granite was enormous. Workers chipped away at the peninsula year after year, hauling cart after cart of dress...

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Image: Declutter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Batten: The 10,000 Visitors of 1906

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scalezz, CC BY-SA 3.0. There was a window, before the military took over completely, when Mount Batten was a day-trip destination for Plymouth. The coastal walk to Jennycliff was magnificent. The inns built originally to feed and water the quarrymen now did brisk business in tea and beer for visitors w...

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Image: Scalezz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Batten: Aircraftsman Shaw

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scalezz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The air station went through three names in seven decades: RNAS Cattewater from 1913, RAF Cattewater from 1918, and finally RAF Mount Batten from 1928. Between 1917 and 1945 it was a flying boat base, hosting Royal Air Force and Royal Navy aircraft and operating high-speed search...

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Image: Scalezz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Batten: What's Here Now

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scalezz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The RAF finally left Mount Batten in 1986, and the former base was transferred to Plymouth Development Corporation in 1992. The breakwater, closed for decades and used for a time to store flying boats, was refurbished and reopened to the public in 1995. Each August the British Fi...

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Image: Scalezz | CC BY-SA 3.0