Booth’s diaries

“4 Fourthly: North Front, consisting of an irregular and Demi Bastion with a Casemate.

The Bastion was anciently a Square Moorish Tower and retains the same form it had except the Parapet in front which are made of Tapia with 4 Embrasures in the face towards the Enemy, 3 towards the Sea, 2 in the flank next the Ditch & 3 next Waterport.

The Curtain has 17 Embrasures with a Tapia Parapet of 22 feet thick, mounted with 18 pounders of Brass commanding part of the neck of land, but by the Glacis being raised and the Battery lowered they do not bear so near as they would do otherwise. ‘Tis also singular that in the whole length of the Curtain there is no Banguette to raise the soldiers to fire over nor can the Sentry’s for want of it, see what is passing on the covertway.

The Demi Bastion called the Prince of Hesse’s Battery has its Parapet made in the same manner as the Curtain with two guns in front of great use in defending the avenue next the Lines & two also in its flank. This whole work was rebuilt in 1730 by lowering part of the Battery 8 feet, raising a new Parapet of Tapia with stone platforms, and a new communication from it by steps to the King’s Lines. ‘Tis to be observed that all Parapets of stone or Tapia cement in time and turn as hard as stone and of consequence dangerous to the besieged nor so secure and convenient as those of Fascines or sandbags.

5th Covertway Landport: Is carried in front of the North Bastion, Curtain, Prince of Hesses’s Battery and under part of the King’s Lines but had it been continued still further on it would have better secured the foot of those Lines and multiplied the fire on the passes. Beneath this Glacis are very irregular sousterrains for mines whose chambers are under ye salient angle and spur.

6th The Bridge that communicates from thence into the Place, is of masonry with a drawbridge at the Gateway was built in the Year 1733.”

Image: Plan und Prospect von der Stadt, Vestung un Fortification von Gibraltar. 1753. Nurnberg, and corresponding approximately to the time of Booth's description