Early history of the site
Tradition records that the first arrivals on what is now the North Shore were Te Tini o Maruiwi. One of the descendants of these people, Peretu, is remembered in many place names in the area including the pa, Te Rahopara o Peretu, which is located on a headland to the south of the Castor Bay Battery and Camp site.
Later, Kawerau occupied this part of Tamaki, their area of influence being subsequently modified by Ngati Whatua and Ngati Paoa. In 1841 the site was obtained by the Crown as part of the Mahurangi Purchase, which included the land between Maungauika (North Head) and Te Arai in the north.
By the early twentieth century, most of the site formed a large holding in the possession of Alexander Roger Morrison. Morrison was a Devonport businessman, who appears to have owned other land on Auckland’s North Shore. Images of the surrounding area show much of it as farmland. Castor Bay was also being increasingly promoted and developed as a popular seaside resort.
Background to the creation of the Castor Bay Battery and Camp
In 1910 British Field Marshall Lord Kitchener paid a visit to New Zealand to advise on defence matters and recommended building a new battery on the approaches to the outer harbour. His recommendation was at ‘Burton’s Point’, the next promontory to the north of Fort Takapuna. This was never carried out but it does seem that land at Castor Bay, even further north, was purchased at the time and was occasionally used for military exercises.
In 1934, to the dismay of local landowners whose access to the beach was cut off, further land at Castor Bay - including the current site - was taken although the reasons for this were not made public at the time with one newspaper speculating that it may have had something to do with aircraft, possibly seaplanes.
The real reason was that in 1933 the New Zealand army was planning to build a second 6-inch battery to supplement the existing installation at North Head. The old battery was now too close to the port to be effective against modern artillery and a new, ‘counter bombardment’ battery was required. Counter bombardment had been developed during the First World War and allowed guns on 45-degree mountings to fire over the horizon.
Two officers were sent to investigate sites for this new fortification and eventually selected ‘Red Bluff’ near Castor Bay. Guns were ordered from Britain and as part of the package the coordinates of the new battery were supplied so that the correct range-finding equipment could be supplied. The War Office in London through which the order passed, however, was not impressed by the location. The new battery was subsequently built on Motutapu, leaving the army with an enlarged landholding at Castor Bay with nothing on it except the stock of a contract grazier.
During the Second World War, Auckland’s harbour defences were planned around all ships entering the harbour through the Whangaparaoa Passage having to pass over a controlled minefield. All other access was to be ‘denied’ using fixed minefields. To help control the entry, the old 6-inch guns from North Head were moved to a new battery site at the end of Whangaparaoa Peninsula.
This however created a temporary problem. The minefields and the new Motutapu searchlights were not ready and the removal of the North Head guns meant that at night an enemy vessel, out of range of the city’s searchlights could shell the naval installations in Devonport invulnerable to counter attack. In August 1940, the commanding officer of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy Commodore W. E. Parry summed up the situation: ‘No effective action can at present be taken against a cruiser which chooses to bombard Auckland by night.’
A new 6-inch battery was needed and the land purchased at Castor Bay finally had a use.
Building the Battery
Planning for a battery and camp at the Castor Bay site was underway by the beginning of January 1941. Occupying a cliff-top location to the north of the Castor Bay inlet, the military installation was conceived to accommodate 130 personnel. The complex was planned at the outset to encompass gun emplacements, searchlights, observation posts, and a magazine and store. It was also to include accommodation buildings, a parade ground and other facilities.
At the time Castor Bay was being planned there was a serious shortage of heavy artillery in New Zealand. For this reason the guns used at Castor Bay were originally intended for Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS) and were supplied by the navy. By 21 March 1941 it was reported that two 6-inch MK VII guns were ready for use.
Engineering surveys at the site were completed before early January 1941 and by 30 January the work was approved. Work on the new battery started in April 1941 with an estimated cost of £50,000 for the battery and an additional £20,000 for the accommodation camp.
Although the original plans have not survived there is enough information to reconstruct what these were intended to be.
Peter Corbett in his study of Auckland’s coastal defences, A First Class Defended Port suggested that the original design of the battery appeared to be very similar to the emplacements being built at the same time at Whangaparaoa. Corbett described it thus:
‘It featured two concrete emplacements for guns and a large underground complex between them. In this were to be magazines, crew shelters, a gun store and a generator room. All were to be covered by a reinforced concrete burster slab for protection against enemy fire.’
The urgent situation meant emplacements took priority over any underground structures and by July 1941, three months after the start of work, the guns had been test fired. By this time however the battery at Whangaparaoa was almost completed and the urgency which had driven the work at Castor Bay had eased. It was subsequently decided to complete the battery at a lower level of finish than originally planned.
All tunnelling was abandoned, and was replaced by older ‘cut and cover’ methods. This entailed excavating the underground parts of the battery as an open trench, constructing the building and then back filling the hole to bury the structure. The expensive burster slab, command post, crew shelters, stairs, hoists and magazine were abandoned and instead a series of underground sloping ramps were constructed which linked the emplacements with ammunition lockers set into the sides of the passage. As a result of these changes there was now a ‘stairway to nowhere’ leading to the non-existent command post.
The overhead protection which had been sacrificed in these new simplified plans was compensated for in the design of the gun emplacements. Coastal artillery had been playing a game of hide and seek for over 70 years. In the early nineteenth century guns had been emplaced in the open, and then for a few years in the 1880s the guns on ‘disappearing’ mountings had sheltered underground only emerging to fire. The problem with this system was that the cumbersome disappearing carriages slowed the rate of fire, so artillery was emplaced in the open again.
And then aircraft arrived. The experience of British batteries during the Battle of Britain during 1940 had demonstrated the vulnerability of artillery sited in the open to aerial attack. While the newer guns like the 9.2s had steel turrets or gun houses as part of their design, older guns like those used at Castor Bay, lacked this feature. One solution was to install steel protection on the gun but this had the effect of unbalancing the mountings. Another response was to put a defensive roof on the gun emplacement.
There were problems with this too as the supports needed for the roof restricted the arc of fire the guns could achieve. At Castor Bay a neat and local solution was found. The College of Engineering at Auckland University designed concrete shelters known as ‘frying pans’, which had a cantilevered circular concrete roof supported on steel reinforced columns that occupied only a very small percentage of the circumference of the gun pit. While clever, the ‘frying pans’ were only used in two other locations because of the large amounts of the then scarce reinforcing steel required.
Immediately behind the guns, a very distinctive two-story concrete battery observation post of Modernist-influenced design was built. In early 1942, two searchlight emplacements were installed near the base of the cliffs to assist in identifying targets. In April 1942, a P.P. Magazine and searchlight engine room was built by the contractor, W. Whitaker to the south of the guns. The following month, the battery was provided with radar, the installation for which was 2.4 km west of the guns.
From 1941 until 1945 the installation was known as 63rd Battery, 9th Heavy (Coastal) Regiment, N.Z.R.A.
Building the Battery Camp
The Battery Camp at Castor Bay was incorporated into the initial planning and placed in the hands of the Public Works Department. This camp, however, was going to be different to those elsewhere, ‘I am given to understand that the type of barrack accommodation contemplated is of bungalow design, in order that it may conform with existing private residences in the vicinity, and the plans should be prepared accordingly’ wrote the Resident Engineer to the District Engineer on 6 February 1941.
To disguise its function, the camp was designed to resemble a civilian housing estate rather than a military encampment with its usual rows of long rectangular barracks. The use of bungalow design was to be part of this, and originally the buildings were to be laid out in the manner of the ‘surrounding beach cottages and detract from aerial observation’. The army however found this to be a little too informal and instead the bungalows were set out in two orderly rows, just like any other military encampment.
There were other constraints on the location of the camp. Firstly it had to be out of sight of any seaborne attacker and clear of the arc of fire of the guns which in the event of enemy landings may have been required to fire inland. Also excavations had to be kept to a minimum because of the clear signs from the air of any earthworks in the North Shore clay soils. This restricted the location to an area at the back of the crest of the site and adjacent to the road. There were advantages in this as it had the effect of raising some of the buildings high enough above the ground to allow lavatories to be incorporated underneath rather than being sited in a separate structure.
The army had other specialised requirements from these modified state houses. The blast from the guns was such that normal civilian glazing would not have withstood the shock wave and so the district engineer reported in April 1941 that ‘...all windows have been divided into small panes by a vertical glazing bar in the sashes, in addition to the customary two horizontal bars.’
The designer, Charles E. Price, the Resident Architect for the Public Works Department in Auckland had to take all this into account. A private company, T. F. Playfair of Auckland, undertook the construction work, employing 30-40 men at a tendered price of £18,900. The building work was started in July 1941 and was completed by October. In total, ten men’s dormitory buildings were erected, in addition to accommodation for officers and mess buildings. The camp also included a recreation hall and parade ground. In August 1941, water was supplied by an 80,000-gallon reservoir, and a separate sewage system discharged directly into the sea. As well as designing the complex, Price also undertook the building supervision.
Throughout the war, work continued on the battery camp. Painting of the buildings started in October 1941 and there is a reference to ‘a specially manufactured shade’ described as ‘bronzy camouflage.’ Then in late 1942 new alterations were tendered which mark an important change in the way coastal defences were operated. On 20 November 1942 the District Engineer wrote to Messrs Kells and Steele of Takapuna to notify them that they were the successful tenderer for ‘WAAC Accommodation: Alterations’.
The entry of Japan into the war tested New Zealand’s resources in all areas. One response was to use women soldiers who in Britain had been successfully employed operating coastal and anti aircraft defences. Formed early in 1942, by November 1942 the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) had 2,200 members, many of whom had been trained in the operation of range finding, radar and communications for coastal defences. WAAC Ngaire Subritsky recorded that she was instructed in radar operation at Castor Bay.
1942 marked the high point of the very real fear of attack, as one gunner noted, ‘It wasn’t if they were coming, it was when they were coming, we expected them every night.’ Gradually however the Japanese forces were stopped and then gradually driven back. The official emphasis on coastal defences lessened and construction slowed. By 1944 Castor Bay had been placed on reserve. For the remainder of the war it was used for training purposes and as part of the Examination Service.
Camouflage and Deception
The attempt to make the battery camp appear to be a civilian housing area was just one part of what became the most elaborate attempt at camouflaging a gun battery in New Zealand. Gun emplacements at Tomahawk Beach in Dunedin and the battery at Bluff used similar measures but neither took it to the extremes used at Castor Bay and most other batteries attempted to hide rather than disguise the guns. At Castor Bay every attempt was made to make the emplacements, the control structures and even the reservoir appear to be something they weren’t.
The reality of aerial surveillance and attack had been seen during the early stages of the war in Britain while in the Pacific many enemy vessels carried reconnaissance aircraft. One from the Japanese submarine I 21 flew over Auckland on 24 May 1942 looking for targets; the fear of aerial observation and attack was real.
At Castor Bay, as suggested by the British experts, the deception was planned from the start, Battery Observation Posts are usually stark concrete structures; at Castor Bay people accused the army of building something like an Italian ice cream kiosk. The long slit window which was used in conjunction with range finding instruments is typical of observation posts, and was screened by a large overhanging gable with a tiled roof, while the rest of the building was fitted with domestic windows and doors.
The distinctive roofs on the gun emplacements were pitched, complete with chimneys built over the ‘frying pans’. Walls were made from canvas, painted to look like houses with windows. Trellis was attached to the support pillars. The surrounding areas were then laid out to look like vegetable gardens. Even the sloping concrete roof of the reservoir was painted black and made to look like a tennis court.
Castor Bay Battery, Post War History
At the end of the war, the main use of the site was for storage of surplus army equipment. Then in 1948 the Compulsory Military Service (CMT) was reintroduced and the battery was used for training, and annual camps were held. Part of the training included live firing of the guns, to the consternation of the new housing developments which were being built around the battery.
The last firing of the 6-inch guns was in 1952, after which they were replaced by 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns converted to an anti-ship role. This entailed rebuilding the emplacements which had their floors raised, the shell recesses modified and steel stairs added. The 3.7-inch guns were first fired in February 1953.
It was however the beginning of the end for the coastal defences. New technology meant that the old concept of ringing a coastline with defences no longer worked. At Castor Bay the last camp was held in 1955 and in 1956 the guns were removed and the rest of the equipment declared surplus and sold. In 1962 the area was taken over by the Takapuna City Council as a reserve and named ‘J. F. Kennedy Park’ after the assassinated United States President. Efforts from local community groups subsequently led to structures such as the Battery Observation Post being conserved and converted to community use. The area has undergone significant recent development with children’s playgrounds, improved beach access and a petanque court on the old parade ground.
Castor Bay Camp, Post War History
At the end of the war Castor Bay was unique among the Auckland gun batteries in that the attached battery camp comprised what were in effect state houses. While there was a proposal to convert the camp into a naval training facility this was never carried out. House building had been put on hold during the war and with the prospect of thousands of service men and women returning home and needing a place to live, all options were explored.
As early as March 1944 the idea of using the camp as civilian accommodation was being considered and by April 1944 a proposal was made to bring the buildings where suitable up to ‘State House finish’ prior to being let. In December 1944 the camp buildings were transferred to the War Assets Realisation Board for use ‘...of civil requirements’ and a ‘climb proof fence’ between the battery and the houses was built.
By April 1945, progress was well underway providing accommodation for eight to ten families. In January 1946, the work was described as almost completed. By March 1946 four of the barracks had been moved onto small sections adjoining Beach Road, immediately to the west of the Battery Observation Post. Other converted houses remained on their original sites. The form and much of the fabric of the original buildings was retained during the conversion to state housing. On 17 April 1947 the transfer of land to the Housing Department was gazetted and the barracks officially became houses.
The houses, built hurriedly during the war were difficult to maintain and gradually they were demolished. Today, only one of these structures remains. This building, at 139 Beach Road, started life as a men’s dormitory but was converted for use by WAAC members in 1942. It was moved to its present position as one the four structures relocated by early 1946. Currently (2014) vacant, it is the sole survivor of a building type unique to this site. It complements the other major remnant of ‘built in’ camouflage on the site, the adjoining Battery Observation Post.
