A rifle range first appears in this location on the second edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1894-1899 (1). The targets are located within Boat Hill Plantation on the eastern side of the River Wear with a 600 yard range stretching northwards across the river and fields on the other side, marked at 100 yard intervals. The 600 yard marker is just to the southwest of Lumley Park on the western side of the Wear. The range is still marked on the fourth epoch OS maps of 1938-1950 (2) but has gone by the fifth epoch maps of 1951-1959 (3). This suggests that range would have been in use, perhaps in military training exercises late in the 19th century, during the First World War and WW2.