What is recorded here

Finnavarra Battery is a squat ovoid Martello tower built between 1812 and 1816 on a narrow peninsula projecting into Ballyvaughan Bay, County Clare. Dressed limestone blocks rise ten metres toward a flat roof that once held three gun placements, while a doorway set three metres above ground waited for a ladder and a small circular opening in the lintel may have let defenders strike downward. The tower still stands beside a roofless stone building whose robbed-out fireplaces and red brick walls hint at the daily lives of the people who watched the bay.

Listed as ‘Martello tower’ in the RMP (1996). Situated on Finnavarra Point at the W end of a long narrow peninsula projecting W into Ballyvaughan Bay and built during the Napoleonic Wars (1812-16). A fine squat ovoid tower (diam. c. 17m; H c. 10m) of finely dressed large rectangular limestone blocks standing on a double plinth and tapering inwards gently towards the top of the tower. A rectangular doorway faces E 3.7m above ground level. It has a sloping sillstone to accommodate a ladder, the stone foot-plate of which lies embedded in the ground 3.2m E of the tower. A small circular opening in the lintel of the door may have acted as a murder-hole. According to the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage there is a cutstone limestone flat roof with three gun placements at parapet level and a brick vaulted interior roof structure. A roofless and partly robbed-out stone building (L 9.7m N-S; Wth 4.2m; wall T 0.6m) stands 4.5m to ENE. It contains robbed out fireplaces and flues in the N and S gables and some red brick in the walls. (www.buildingsofireland.ie, reg. no. 20400205) Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 30 November 2015

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.