It overlooks the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers on the approach to the harbour, which has been an important civil and naval port since the Middle Ages.

[3] On the promontory itself, an earthen artillery battery of five 24-pounder guns was constructed in 1812, intended to supplement the larger Harwich Redoubt, which had been completed 200 yards (180 m) to the north in 1810 and was armed with ten 24-pounders.

[1] In 1887, renewed fear of a French invasion prompted the Secretary of State for War, Edward Stanhope, to chair a committee on the "Fortifications and Armaments of Military and Mercantile Ports".

The rear of the work was protected by a defensive perimeter built to a new design called the Twydall Profile, consisting of an earthen rampart, fronted by a glacis sloping down to a shallow ditch that concealed a steel palisade fence.

[5] In 1894, a former practice battery sited near the tip of the headland and dating from 1871 was rebuilt to mount four RML 64-pounder guns on traversing carriages for close defence.

[5] During the First World War, Harwich was an important destroyer base; improvements to the battery included two QF 1-pounder pom-pom anti-aircraft guns.

This housed a Type 287 Radio Direction Finding (RDF) array, used to monitor the observation mine field installed across the harbour entrance.