HMS Nimrod

(Redirected from HMS Nemesis)

HMS Nimrod was a World War II Anti-Submarine Training Base located in Campbeltown on the Kintyre peninsula.

The facility was an ASDIC training school, partnered with the Anti-Submarine Training Base HMS Osprey, based in Dunoon, which formed when the original base was moved from Portland in 1941, due to the potential danger of easy aerial observation and bombing by the Luftwaffe.

HMS Nimrod was located in the original Campbeltown Grammar School (now believed to be a further education centre), and extensive building took place in an area to the south of the existing buildings. The administration was located in Stronvaar House, adjacent to a disused railway cutting. In the 1940s, Stronvaar Avenue was only a muddy track behind the houses on Kilkerran Road. Council flats, which had not been completed at the beginning of the war, were used as accommodation blocks, and may have been known as HMS Nimrod B. WRNS personnel were accommodated in Ardnacraig House, on Limecraigs Road off Kilkerran Road, in Limecraigs House, and in a group of Nissen huts built on the Quarry Green at the Kilkerran Road end of the Limecraigs Road.

Note that there has been considerable development since 1945, and Limecraigs Road on present day maps is new, and not the Limecraigs Road of 1945, which led to the same general area from Kilkerran Road and now appears to be shown as Woodlands Drive. Limecraigs, in terms of the map, is the area where the present Campbeltown Grammar School lies, around the junction of Limecraigs Road and Woodlands Drive. Ardnacraig Drive now appears to lead to new housing on the site of Ardnacraig House, which was destroyed by fire in the late 1940s. The WRNS huts then would have been located on the shore side of the junction of Kilkerran Road and Woodlands Drive.

The displacement of pupils and staff from the old Grammar School led to several church halls and other suitable buildings - Kirk Street Halls, Lorne Street Church hall, Dalaruan Hall - being pressed into temporary service for educational purposes.

The original Campbeltown Grammar School is now Castlehill Primary School and the Community Education Centre (Argyll College), with Campbeltown Grammar School now located on a larger site, a short distance to the south east.

HMS Nemesis

The base operated the training ship HMS Nemesis, located in Campbeltown harbour.

Rifle Ranges

No longer shown on modern mapping, old maps c.1900 show two rifle ranges to the south. These can be seen using the People's Map option given in the Aerial links section below.

One is shown in the valley from Knockbay to Crosshill Loch, formed by a dam and, until the 1950s, the reservoir from which most of Campbeltown drew its water through a tunnel which ran parallel to the second range.

The second range is believed to have been in use until the 1940s, and would probably have been used by HMS Nimrod and other organisations. This range bordered a wood and ran uphill, with several butts being constructed on the line of the range. Postwar development has seen a small housing estate being developed on the site - Meadows Avenue, Crosshill Avenue, Range Road(!), Tomaig Road) - which effectively cut off access to the range, and also covered part of the track of the old Campbeltown and Machrihanish light railway.

The second range is believed to have fallen into disuse not only because of its proximity to the nearby housing, but also because a more isolated outdoor range was built at HMS Landrail, behind the sand dunes of Machrihanish Bay, in the vicinity of a building utilised for bomb disposal.

Bomb attacks

Campbeltown Loch saw at least two German bombing attacks, with incendiary devices and mines being dropped, and machine-gunning of vessels in the harbour. It has been speculated that the area attracted the attention of such attacks due to the location of HMS Nimrod on land, and HMS Nemesis in the harbour, but as the harbour was also one of the first western approached from the Atlantic, it would not have escaped enemy attention, and was equipped with an observation post, minefield, and boom defence.

On November 6, 1940, the bombing resulted in serious damage to the town's Royal Hotel and Victoria Hall. Two casualties have been reported: Alexander Blue, a lorry driver, was killed in the raid, and Thomas Hunter, an agricultural adviser, died in hospital the following day.

On February 9, 1941, a single bomb is reported to have missed the harbour, and landed on a house located in the adjacent hillside, causing the destruction of the house and the death of its sole occupant, identified as Archibald Stewart, the local Procurator Fiscal.

A further account of the second bombing has been provided, describing a much more sustained and deliberate attack, probably intended to mine Campbeltown Loch, and the harbour. During this attack, two deaths are reported: Archibald Stewart and Frederick Pendle. Two mines are said to have exploded in the vicinity of Mr Stewart's House and a house at Trench Point, then occupied by the McCorkindale family, leaving it severely damaged and uninhabitable. A number of houses on the north shore of the Loch at Askomill were also reported to have suffered minor damage. After this raid, several Clyde steamers, converted to minesweepers, arrived and spent the next few days searching the loch for mines.

The four dead are believed to be remembered on Campbeltown's war memorial, but we have not verified this account.