Duncannon Fort, Duncannon, Co. Wexford

Built in 1943, this single-storey pill box, a small hardened observation and firing position designed to give defenders a low, narrow profile against attack, was part of a partial refortification of the fort during the Second World War, a period known in neutral Ireland as "The Emergency".

Duncannon Fort had already stood guard over the Waterford estuary for centuries by the time this addition was made, but the anxieties of 1939 to 1946 gave it a new, if modest, role. The pill box is freestanding, flat-roofed, and built on a half-octagonal plan, its reinforced concrete walls rendered smooth. A single square-headed opening on its south side, known as a "monitor" opening, would have allowed occupants to observe the approach or estuary while remaining largely protected within. It is a plain, functional structure, built quickly and without ornament, in keeping with the improvised defensive works that appeared around Ireland's coastline as the state prepared for a war it hoped to avoid. Today the structure is disused, its purpose long since passed, but it remains within the shared grounds of the fort, a small concrete footnote to the much longer military history of the site.