quick-firing guns were installed in a battery on the end of the east wing, supported by machine guns, to enable them to target fast moving vessels, particularly the new torpedo boats. Further emplacements for 12-pounder (5.4 kg) guns followed, including one on the top of the keep. Thomas Clarke, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, was born in Hurst Castle. 20th and 21st centuries By the First World War, the guns installed at Hurst Castle in the 1870s were obsolete. The castle retained seventeen of them, as historian Coad states, wired up together "like a collection of elderly blunderbusses", but the fort depended on its newer quick-firing weapons. During the war, Hurst's armament was controlled from Needles Battery, where a Fire Command Post, equipped with telegraphy, had been established. After the war, the guns were removed from the 16th-century part of the castle, which was passed into the national collection of the Ministry of Works in 1933, although some modernisation of the rest of the fortification took place in the 1930s. The "low light" was replaced by a new iron lighthouse in 1911. During the Second World War, Hurst was re-armed in 1940 with two 12-pounder (5.4 kg) guns and a unit of the Isle of Wight Rifles was stationed there, controlled from the Fire Control Needles. Searchlights and two more 6-pounder (2.7 kg) guns followed the next year, when the 37-strong detachment was retitled the 129 Coastal Battery Royal Artillery, followed by the installation of Bofors anti-aircraft guns. A tower, called the Director Tower, was built along the west wing. As the war progressed, the weapons were stood down and the battery finally closed in July 1945, with most of the weapons being removed after the war. In 1956 the whole of Hurst Castle was transferred to the guardianship of the Ministry of Works. During the 1970s, the additional concrete protection added to the south bastion in the 1880s was removed. When the government agency English Heritage was formed in 1983, it took over the control of the castle. In 1996 the Friends of Hurst Castle took on the day-to-day management of the castle, with English Heritage continuing to run other aspects of the site. As of 2015, the castle received around 40,000 visitors a year. The castle is protected under UK law as an ancient monument. The High Lighthouse built in