Fortifications

Constructed in the autumn of 1861 as part of a cluster of fortifications built to protect the Chain and Aqueduct Bridges across the Potomac River, the battery’s well preserved but unrestored remnants can be found in a park on Chain Bridge Road near Loughboro Road NW. According to chief engineer, Colonel John C. Barnard “The possession of the Chain Bridge communication with the opposite shore of the Potomac…was essential to the operations of our forces in Virginia and to the prestige of our arms.”

The battery was built on land owned by Captain William A.T. Maddox, a career U.S. Marine officer, and named for Gouveneur Kemble, the prewar superintendent of the West Point Foundry where many of the guns of the Defenses of Washington were forged. It contained two 100-pound Parrott rifles, the largest of the many calibers of artillery protecting Washington City.

The land for Battery Kemble Park was bought by the federal government sometime between 1916 and 1923 when much of the land for the proposed, but never created, Fort Circle Drive was acquired. The park now contains a shaded picnic area with a small stream running through it.