The guns were grouped in pairs, each pair of guns flanking a magazine. The magazines are brick-vaulted structures made bombproof by a mound of earth, with access to the guns on each side through a concrete tunnel of shuttered construction. From each side of the tunnel a shell store and a cartridge store opens out - each side serving its own gun. The separate lamp passages encircling the magazines, as found in the Nothe, to prevent any naked lights entering the magazines themselves, are not present, the access corridor acting as the lamp passage. The magazines are ventilated by air-bricks connecting with the access tunnel and ceiling vents connecting with ventilators passing from the roof of the access tunnel through the earth mound to the surface. By 1893 this type of Battery had become sufficiently established for an illustration and description to be included in the new edition of the Textbook of Fortification and Military Engineering, and a sample was constructed at the Shoeburyness artillery ranges for instructional purposes.

The old rapid-burning propellant generated clouds of smoke; this tell-tale was less of a disadvantage for a high- angle Battery firing from a position concealed behind a cliff. The Verne Quarry emplacements followed the textbook design. The shells and cartridges were brought to the muzzles of the guns, at their loading angle of 30 degrees, by the use of a ramp and davits; a narrowgauge railway ran around the edge of the emplacement to receive the shells from the davit and transport them to the muzzle. Ring-bolts were set into the walls for lifting tackle; all guns had to be manhandled into position and a regular exercise for Garrison Artillery was the removing and replacing of heavy gun barrels. Although the weapons had a 360 degree traverse the rotation of the gun (by hand) was not a speedy operation and the emplacements were therefore arranged so as to face the likeliest direction of attack. Three were arranged to fire eastwards and the fourth in a southerly direction; through rotating the guns through 90 degrees from its extreme loading position fire could be brought to bear on West Bay but this was clearly not thought of as a regular function of the Battery. All the emplacements have been subsequently modified and adapted, as will be seen. The southerly position was probably intended to cover a key element in the Fortress, the pumping station at Chene which supplied the Verne with water, a remarkable and probably unique survival of a fortified pumping station, made bomb proof by mounding earth in the same way as the magazines. By 1895 Verne Quarry Battery currently mounted 3 high angle guns in the four emplacements and a total of 6 were proposed, an addition of 2 to the original establishment. This involved a major rebuilding of the Battery.

The High Angle Battery, Second Stage

A number of position-finding and range-finding equipments had been developed during the 1880's and the operation of the High Angle Battery, in particular, would have been impossible without them. A sketch preserved in the Royal Engineers' Library shows eight position finding Stations in the Weymouth and Portland area; the NE face of the Verne ( Harbour ), SE Face ( Quarry ), W face ( Chesil ), SE glacis, Nothe Common, Nothe, Nothe Garden, Breakwater and Weare. Each of these Stations comprised several position finding cells. The Battery was reconstructed in 1898 (again, the only evidence for this is a date-stone on the war shelter between the two original pairs of guns ) and four new emplacements were constructed between the original ones. The two outermost emplacements were rehandled; the holdfasts for the guns, the rails around the edge of the gun pit and the four recessed ringbolts in the emplacement walls were removed, and all made good by re-concreting. The position of the holdfast can be clearly discerned, as can part of the rails on the southernmost emplacement. Had these two emplacements simply been abandoned all this work would have been unnecessary. They had, in fact, almost certainly been altered to house 6 inch howitzers; these weapons were on field carriages and were wheeled into position when required. Two 6 inch BL howitzers had been approved for the Verne in 1898, and doubtless these were the weapons involved. The holdfasts would have been an obstacle and the ring-bolts redundant, as these weapons did not have to be erected and dismantled by ropes and gyns. The weapons would have counted as part of the armament of the Verne and not been reckoned as part of the Battery. Four new HA emplacements were constructed between the inner pair of emplacements, all aligned in straight line facing east. A War Shelter was built behind these, with two store/workshop buildings to the rear of it. A rail system to serve the Battery was inserted, running from the magazines; the howitzer emplacements did not need to be rail-served so no rail connection was provided for them. Rails connect both magazines; a pair of points at the northern end lead up a ramp and via a bridge and turntable to a straight track running at a tangent to the emplacements. Rails ran round the edge of each emplacement, connected by points with the straight track. It will be noted that there is no direct connection between the southern magazine and the track which served the loading platform. This can be explained if the functions of the two magazines were differentiated following the rebuilding of the Battery, with the northern one housing the heavy shells, which had to be railed to the muzzles of the guns, and the southern one the cartridges, which traveled at ground level to the rear of the guns and were then manhandled and hoisted up to the loading platform.

Each emplacement is provided with two expense magazines recessed into concrete walls separating the emplacements; all the metal doors have been robbed. The War Shelter is a simple shuttered concrete tunnel, with access at each end and by two ramps to the gun positions. There is no provision for lighting and no roof venting, in keeping with its emergency function. Electricity was supplied to the Battery, presumably from the Verne, as no generator room appears to have been provided, and the chasing away of some surface concrete to allow the cables access to recessed junction boxes and light switches survives on the dividing walls between the emplacements. No significant fittings appear to remain within the two rather grand Artillery Stores, which are slightly differentiated architecturally, for unknown reasons.