Martello towers are a familiar enough sight around the Irish coastline, a chain of small defensive forts thrown up in the early nineteenth century against the threat of Napoleonic invasion, but this one quietly accumulated a second life long after the military urgency had faded.

The tower stands roughly seven metres high, with a gently tapering profile and a barrel-shaped interior measuring just over six metres in both directions. The design follows the standard Martello logic: a vaulted first floor, reached by a doorway set into the north face with a machicolation directly above it, the latter being a projecting opening through which defenders could drop stones or hot liquid onto anyone attempting to force the entrance. Spiral stairs in the northwest of the first floor give access to the paved roof, where a mural chamber is recessed into the parapet wall and the gun carriage track still describes a circuit of the walk. Splayed windows on the east and south faces of the first floor allowed a wide field of view, while smaller barred openings at ground level provided minimal light below. By the end of the nineteenth century, the building had been repurposed as a telegraph station, its role shifting from physical deterrence to the transmission of information across the water. Roughly half a kilometre to the northeast, on what were once the ordnance grounds associated with the tower, the remains of a battery survive as a companion structure to the whole defensive arrangement.