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Britain’s only World War One battlefield combines its storied history with links to the future, as Callum Dickson explores
“On December 16, Hartlepool and this battery were subjected to a bombardment by the German Hochseef lotte, causing the death of, among others , Private Theophilus Jones of the Durham Light Infantry. His death was the first British military casualty on British soil in 200 years”
On the edge of the Headland in Hartlepool, overlooking the North Sea, stands a gun battery with the distinction of being the only World War One battlefield in the United Kingdom, and this oft overlooked point in British history is now commemorated at the self-same fort –Heugh Battery.
Initially constructed in the 1860s as one of Palmerston’s Follies – aseries of forts and batteries designed to defend Britain from a possible French invasion – it saw little action until in 1914.
On December 16 that year, Hartlepool and this battery were subjected to a bombardment by the German Hochseeflotte (High Seas Fleet), causing the death of, among others, British soldier Private Theophilus Jones of the Durham Light Infantry. His death was the first British military casualty on British soil in 200 years. It is his loss, together with the wider destruction of the town, and the resistance of Heugh Battery, that mark the fort as being the only World War One battlefield in Britain.
