Signal tower

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on a low hill immediately adjacent to the E side of a narrow point along the main shipping approach to Cork Harbour to the NW and N (OD c. 70m). Roche’s Point, to the E side of the mouth of the harbour, located c. 2.4kms to the S\SSE. The signal station was located within the confines of Fort Carlisle (now Fort Davis; SMR CO087-058----). However, the exact location has not been determined but it would have been located no more than c. 150m E of the coastline. Likely sites for the signal station are located to the SE end of the main battery\fortifications at Fort Carlisle\Fort Davis where higher ground provides better visibility to the approaches to the harbour from the S and intervisibility with the adjacent contemporaneous signal station\tower sites in the chain to SW and E. The site of Carlisle Fort\Fort Davis is generally level to the E side (of the current enclosed complex) but the land slopes down gradually to the W to the coastline. The area within Carlisle Fort\Fort Davis is now characterised by rough vegetation; the landscape to the immediate E outside of fortification boundary consists generally of arable land (with some pastureland) with a large modern oil refinery located immediately adjacent to the NE of site. The adjacent stations in the signal station\tower chain are found at the Britfieldstown, Robert’s Head (CO113-015---), located c. 13.7kms to the SW, which survives in relatively good condition, and at Ballynacotter (CO089-048----), located c. 13.3kms to the E, which survives in good condition and is now incorporated into a dwelling.

The signal crew were presumably housed within existing buildings available at the fort, and the only addition to site is likely to have been limited to the erection of the signal mast that Kerrigan established was in place in 1805 (Kerrigan 1995, 277).

Carlisle Fort was in existence by the mid-early-to sixteenth century (established by c. 1607) but the site has undergone numerous and extensive phases of alteration and modernisation on many occasions since (Hartnett McEnery 2006, 7, 44-6, 126-8). The complex visible onsite today dates mainly from the 1860s onwards when it was extensively modernised and expanded as it was considered as a site strategically vital to British naval interests.

The fortifications and ancillary complexes depicted on the Ordnance Survey first ed. six-inch map, surveyed 1841-2, is expansive and complex. However, there is no indication of where a signal station\tower was situated. The site (2020) survives in a relatively good condition, and features multiple lines of fortification with multiple barrack buildings and ancillary structures) including ditches, banks, walls, bastions, batteries, and numerous barracks (CO087-058----). The site is currently owned by the Department of Defence and is still used by the Irish Army. It has been called Fort Davis since 1938.

The signal station was part of a system of over 80 signal stations constructed by the British Board of Ordnance in the first decade of the nineteenth 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: 26/09/22

References

Kerrigan P.M. 1995 Castles and fortifications in Ireland 1485-1945. Cork. The Collins Press.

Rathbone, S. 2020. ‘The Construction, Survival and use of Signal Defensible Guard Houses in Connacht and Ulster’; unpublished PhD Thesis, Institute of Technology, Sligo

Hartnett McEnery, J. 2006. Fortress Ireland. The story of the Irish coastal forts and the River Shannon. Bray: Wordwell.