MARTELLO TOWERS
RELICS OF FEAIR OF A FRENCH INVASION. Five Martello towers on the Essex, Suffolk, Kent, and Sussex coast are for sale. They are among the last, if they are not the last, towers remainingi for disposal. It was at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that, to ease national fears of an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte the Government began to build a line of coastal towers from Beachy Head to Hythe, and continued them intermittently elsewhere. The type chosen was similar to the tower on Cape Mortella, in Corsica— hence the name Martello, somewhat popularised— which offered a wonderful resistance, with a garrison of only 33 men, against a comhined sea and land' attack by British forces. Over £250,000 was spent in buildinig the Martello towers between Brighton and Hythe. After the danger of an invasion .by the F'rench was over the towers served as istations for the coastguard. Th'eir days of usefulness soon passed. In modern times some towers have disappeared completely; others form homesteads to miniature small holdings; -still others have been converted into summer residences.
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Bibliographic details
Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 528, 11 May 1933, Page 7
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182MARTELLO TOWERS Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 528, 11 May 1933, Page 7
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