In the Napoleonic era, Britain feared a French invasion and between 1796 and 1815, a string of 103 towers were built along England’s south and east coasts, to house soldiers and guns to help protect the country from attackers. These fortified structures were known as Martello towers, a name that derives from a defensive tower on Punta Mortella in Corsica – the name of the original got misspelled and the misspelling stuck.* Martello Towers are generally elliptical in plan and brick built. The total height was 33 feet and diameters varied from 45 to 55 feet. The walls were up to 13 feet thick and it has been estimated that around 700,000 bricks were used in each tower. One or more cannon were mounted on a rotating platform on the roof. The two floors below provided accommodation for soldiers and stores.
I was reminded of all this the other day when in Aldeburgh. I’d not visited its Martello tower, the most northerly of the British network, since my first visit to the town, years ago. decided to walk south along the beach to the tower, which when it was built was not thought of as being in Aldeburgh at all, but in the lost village of Slaughden, which later succumbed to the coastal erosion that is such a challenge to life on many parts of the East Anglian coast. I wanted to have a look at the tower again because it’s unique in England’s series of such towers, being built on a quatrefoil (or four-leaf clover) plan.¶ This gives it a different look from the other towers and also allows a different set-up for the guns on the roof – there were at first two, then four guns, one for each ‘lobe’ of the quatrefoil. Inside, the upper floor provided accommodation (for eight soldiers, five NCOs and a commanding officer), while the lower floor was for stores containing food, fuel, and gunpowder, the latter kept on the landward side and reached from a separate stair.
When, in the 1930s, the Ministry of Defence decided the tower no longer had any military use, they sold it to private owners who converted it to a dwelling by adding a studio on top. This, however, fell out of use and both the addition and the tower deteriorated. The Landmark Trust acquired the tower in 1971 and converted it for use as holiday accommodation. The Trust have made their usual good job of restoring the building carefully and fitting it out to provide a comfortable (if, on this occasion, unconventional) holiday let.† Whether you want to stay in it, or just admire it from the outside, it’s an impressive testament to the efforts of both the original builders and those who saved it from its slide into decay.
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* The Corsican tower, manned with a garrison of 38 and just three guns, withstood an attack by two British naval ships (with a total of 106 guns). The British clearly thought they could learn something from this.
¶ This larger and more complex plan suggests that the structure may contain at least one million bricks.
† I am indebted to the Landmark Trust’s website for information about the tower’s history.
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