SOUTHPORT DITCH

Southport Ditch was a wide defensive trench stretching from the south-western end of the South Bastion to the base of the Flat Bastion by Prince Edward’s Gate on Charles V Wall. The width of the trench is today marked by Ragged Staff Gates. The area’s defences have evolved substantially over the centuries since the South Bastion was built in the 16th Century.

In the 19th Century, the area of Southport Ditch was used as an ordnance depot. The magazine building was built in the 1880s to house the ammunition required for four new rifle-muzzle loading (RML) guns atop South Bastion, in the location where the Hebrew Old People’s Home is today. In fact, the building is constructed using the gun positions as foundations. One of the guns can be seen mounted just behind Southport Gates, close to Trafalgar Cemetery.

The 1908 OS survey map actually shows the magazine as a pumphouse, so clearly by then its military life was over. The Gibraltar Government’s water section was housed immediately opposite. Over the following years, other buildings slowly accreted in the area which became known as the ‘Patio Chico’. Vehicular traffic was only channelled into Ragged Staff Gates (which originally was a water gate) after WWI when airplanes made the old defences obsolete and reclamation started outside the City Walls, including the construction of Queensway.

The other area of the ditch known as the Sunken Gardens is still remembered by many today and was filled in when Referendum Gate was opened in 1967. Up until recently, the only remaining bit of the original ditch was Trafalgar Cemetery.