TreeAlive
‹ Sites and Monuments Record, Ireland

Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Martello tower

Rine (Burren By.), County Clare, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Martello tower, Rine, County Clare, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Rine (Burren By.)
County
Clare
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Finnavarra Battery
Latest-edition OS map
Martello Tower
Coordinates
53.14981, -9.13556
SMR number
CL002-070----

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1753 map "Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae" (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1753 · Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

Get directions ↗

This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

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

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Martello tower in Clare All County Clare records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
See your own family's places on a living map