Barrack and Signal Tower (in ruins) — Dreenagh (clanmaurice By.)

Situated at the edge of a relatively level area of ground that overlooks Kerry Head to the W (c. 137m OD). The nearest point of the coastline is located approximately 625m to the NW. Located on a minor hilltop with a long moderate slope to the NE. The surrounding area consists of enclosed pasture and arable fields (defined by linear rubble stone walls and earthen banks) to the E, and by unenclosed rough pasture to the W, NW and SW. The adjacent towers in the signal tower chain are found at Loop Head, County Clare (CL071-043-----), located c. 16.6kms to the N but now demolished, and at Ballydavid Head (KE033-027----), now ruinous, located c. 37kms to the SW. There were intermediate enclosed barracks sites associated with the signal tower network located between Ballydavid Head (KE033-027---) and this site at Kerry Head, which were located at Rough Point, Kilshannig (KE019-007----), located c. 13.7kms to the SSW but now demolished, and at Brandon Head (KE025-004----), located c. 29.1kms to the SW, now collapsed. The site of this signal tower at Kerry Head is located c. 4kms W of the remains of St. Dahalin’s Church (KE14-001----), and c. 2.1kms NE of Cahercarbery Beg (KE013-012----), a coastal promontory fort located at Kerry Head. The site of an early nineteenth-century (c. 1804-5) originally two-storey square-plan signal tower (approx. ext. dims. 5.85m NE-SW x 5.85m NW-SE). The signal tower has been demolished. Kerrigan established that the signal tower was completed by 1805 (Kerrigan 1995, 278). The Ordnance Survey first ed. six-inch map, surveyed 1841-2, shows a rectangular enclosure with a rounded end at the NW. A square-plan building, assumed to be the signal tower, is centrally located within the enclosure with a square internal enclosure to the SW and with a wall running along the long axis dividing the NW end of the enclosure. A large rectangular-plan building is shown to the SE of the signal tower, possibly a barracks or residential block, and two smaller rectangular-plan buildings are shown in the NE part of the enclosure. The site is indicated on this map as ‘Barrack & Signal Tower (in Ruins)’. On the Ordnance Survey second ed. six-inch map, surveyed 1894-8, these buildings have been removed, and the only building present is a long thin rectangular-plan building overlying the former position of the signal tower. The long thin rectangular building is still shown on the Ordnance Survey third edition six-inch map, surveyed 1914-5. This building has subsequently been demolished and no obvious traces of the signal tower or the subsequent buildings are now visible. The signal tower was part of a system of over 80 signal stations constructed by the British Board of Ordnance in the first decade of the 19th century to warn of the approach of a French invasion fleet. Signalling between sites was accomplished using a naval signal post. The system formed a continuous chain from Dublin Bay running clockwise all the way around the coast to Malin Head in County Donegal. It was abandoned by the mid-1810s when the threat of a French invasion diminished (Kerrigan 1995, 157-66). Compiled by: Stuart Rathbone Uploaded on: 25/07/22