The Battery, Senhouse Roman Museum

The Battery, now the Senhouse Roman Museum, is a naval gunnery training centre built in 1885 for the Admiralty, and subsequently altered and recently restored following fire damage. It is constructed of rock-faced red sandstone with limestone dressings and a green slate roof. The building has a linear plan parallel to the shoreline, centered on a two-story apsidal tower projecting east, with a gunnery room to the north, a drill hall to the south, and a short cross-wing at the south end. The design is eclectic, incorporating Gothic detailing.

The east front has a symmetrical arrangement of 1:5:1:4 windows. Limestone-dressed chamfered plinths, banded limestone pilasters, and limestone friezes feature on all sections, except the tower, which has an arcaded limestone corbel table to the oversailing upper floor, a limestone cornice, and a semi-conical roof with an apex finial. The tower’s apse has a two-light mullioned window on the ground floor and a six-light mullion-and-transom window on the first floor; its right-hand side has an altered doorway. Straight side walls contain three-light windows at first floor, and the gabled rear wall has a corniced chimney. The side ranges have one-light windows, with the second bay of the north range featuring a wide segmental-pointed arched doorway, and the centre of the south range holding a two-light window. Most windows have small panes formed by chunky wooden glazing bars, but those of the south range are now blocked with render. The north gable wall of the north range has a stepped three-light window and a coped gable with a deep Lombard frieze.

The cross-wing at the south end is higher and more elaborately treated, with rounded corners, an oversailing parapet, and a hipped roof. It has transomed windows with trefoil top-lights and a doorway in the south wall with a moulded surround and a two-centered arched tympanum containing a roundel lettered "VR". The west front, facing the sea, has coupled windows on the south range, two large glazed rectangular gunports with steel shutters (imitating cast-iron originals) flanked by one-light windows on the north range, and a lean-to extension on the tower.

Internally, alterations have been made, but a geometrical stone staircase remains within the apse of the tower. The building was used for gunnery training of the Royal Navy Artillery Reserve from 1885 to 1903 and subsequently of Territorial Army Field Batteries until 1966. It opened as the Senhouse Roman Museum in 1990, housing a collection of Roman artefacts from the nearby fort. It is an unusual and dramatic building situated on a clifftop site.