Gardens Battery

The Gardens Battery was built relatively late and was one of the last new RML batteries built. The gun was intended to have come from Fort Ballance, but it seems to have come from an Auckland surplus. Semi-submerged features were built on both flanks, a gallery on the right flank and a shell and cartridge store to the left.

The magazine was originally going to be for powder, but was altered in September 1896 to take shell & cartridges. The land was formally proclaimed a defence reserve on 24 Sept 1896. The battery was dismantled in 1904.

The Dominion Observatory was built directly over the tunnels in 1907, and some alterations were made then to the magazine. The tunnels were later occupied by seismological equipment, and more alterations were carried out then, including the removal of a section of wall that separated the Lamp Passage from the Shell Store. The Department of Conservation currently administer the battery and it is periodically open to the public.