That road, the New Road, occupies almost exactly the space torn open in the medieval city wall during the Williamite siege of 1690, a breach that a witness measured at forty paces across at its widest point. The soldier and diarist John Stevens recorded that figure in his journal before the Williamite forces withdrew after an assault that, though fierce, did not succeed. The repaired stretch of wall running towards the south-east corner tower still exists, and scholars have noted that its length matches Stevens's measurement with uncomfortable precision.

The feature known as the Black Battery was a 17th-century fortification, a gun platform positioned on the rampart within the salient south-east tower of Irishtown, the area of Limerick lying east of the old walled core. A battery in this context refers simply to an emplacement for artillery, raised on or behind an existing defensive structure. Harold Leask, writing in 1941, identified its position from older maps and placed it just inside the mural tower, a tower set into the curtain wall, at the south-east angle of the district. The rampart on which it stood has a longer history still. The White Manuscripts record that in 1643, during the mayoralty of Dominick White, the east rampart running from St. John's Gate towards a green known as Ana Mayor Chluoin was constructed. The Civil Survey of 1654, as transcribed by Simington, identifies that green as the area commonly called Cluone, lying along the western edge of the city's south suburbs. Leask concluded that the tower at that south-east angle, associated in the sources with the name na Clony, was almost certainly the same tower on which the Black Battery later stood during the sieges of the 1690s.

The site today sits within what were formerly hospital grounds, and the physical remains require some patience to read. The south-east tower itself still stands, though the battery is long gone and the area has changed considerably since the 17th century. Visitors with an interest in the Williamite sieges of Limerick will find the general area easier to interpret with a copy of one of the older city maps, where the battery is marked. The repaired section of the east wall, running between the line of the New Road and the corner tower, is the most legible surviving trace of the 1690 assault.