Lesser Spotted Ireland: The Martello tower and the magic carpet of the Irish sea

The first Martello tower I ever saw was the one that on the shore at Seapoint, near Salthill, in south Dublin. I didn’t have the words for it as a child, but I always liked how the squat round tower looked like a bigger, more exciting version of the boulders that lay near it on the shoreline. What I like now is how the aesthetic of the grey stone tower blends in so seamlessly with the flotsam and jetsam of the stones that lie like a frontier between the concrete pavement and the sea.

I spent a lot of time at Seapoint as a child. My aunt and uncle lived in Monkstown, and their house on Richmond Grove was as familiar to me as my own home in Clare. In the summer, a shop operated near the Martello tower, or perhaps it was at its foot: all I can remember now is the mission for ice cream made in the direction of the tower.

My uncle told me what Martello towers were: how they had been built as lookouts and places of defence in case of invasion by Napoleon, and how they ran all the way along the east coast. When I first saw the one at Sandycove, it was like meeting a relative. I sometimes went up to the Seapoint tower and put my hand on its mighty stone bulk, just to feel its physicality. It defined the shoreline at Seapoint; it still does. What fascinated me, I think, is that it was both public and so private a space. We could all see it, but I had no idea what it was like inside.

The mournful foghorns

From my aunt and uncle’s Monkstown house, we could hear the foghorns sounding whenever visibility was low at sea. You could only hear them at the back of the house or in the garden. I loved their mournful chant and how they made the sea feel so near, so present, as if it was almost in the garden that seemed perpetually full of roses and sweetpeas. It was like the sea was having a conversation with whomever was in earshot. We always paused to listen when the foghorns sounded: our secular Angelus.

The sea at Seapoint felt very different to where I came from. My home county was bordered by an ocean; huge distances lay between where I stood along the Atlantic Ocean and the Americas beyond. When I walked the shoreline at Seapoint, I knew Britain lay at the other side of the Irish Sea, and that Britain wasn’t very far away at all, in the scale of things. It felt utterly different as a place of the imagination.

For my first year in college, I lived in Monkstown with my aunt and uncle. I tried to describe the way I felt about the Irish Sea: “a cul-de-sac”. Dubliners were mightily offended, and even more so when I tried “estuary”. For me, the Atlantic was all about horizons and distance, and possibilities on the other side. I just didn’t feel the same thrill on the Seapoint shoreline.

Years passed. I boarded boats that left the North Wall and Dún Laoghaire, and went far away. I travelled. I had many different jobs, many adventures. I met many people. Eventually, I came back and set up home in Dublin. In the interim, the Monkstown house was sold. My beloved aunt and uncle moved west. The foghorns stopped calling in Dublin Bay. My uncle died first, and then, last autumn, my aunt. I haven’t walked the prom at Seapoint in years.

Martello chance

So when the chance comes to spend a night in a Martello tower in Dublin, the first person I think of is my uncle. How curious he would have been to hear about the experience. I think of all the days of childhood at Seapoint with my aunt and uncle,days bookended in some way by the presence of the Martello tower at the end of the prom. The notion of finally getting to spend a night in one feels a bit like Alice stepping through the looking glass.

Two of my friends, sisters Ellen and Niamh, agree to come with me. The three of us meet on a hot evening in the centre of Dublin and drive out to Sutton in Ellen’s car. As we untangle from the post-work traffic and drive out along the curving shoreline, we begin to feel far away from the city we can still see across the bay. By the time we drive up the narrow little road that winds through a field and ends right at the Sutton Martello tower, it feels as if we are hours from Dublin.

The Sutton tower is the only one in Ireland available to rent. The bedrooms are at the base. My bedroom window is at the end of a wall so thick I could easily sleep in the space between the window and the edge of the wall. My room has a large French flag and a picture of Napoleon, so I guess he managed to take retrospective possession of the tower, one way or the other.

Upstairs is a grand living room, and upstairs again is a floor that has been added, where the kitchen was. Windows run all the way around this level, in the manner of a lighthouse. On the floor we can see the curve of the original roof, and at its centre a piece of granite where the rooftop cannon was originally fixed. Connecting all the floors is a flight of stone steps as steep and narrow as a corkscrew. We have to press ourselves against the walls of the building as we go carefully up and down, trusting that the stone that has endured so long will hold us up.

We store the groceries and go for a stroll in the wind-blown sunny evening. As we walk along, catching up with each other’s news, an unusual, persistent whining sound catches my attention. I look around for its source and find it in the sky: a drone, the first I have ever seen.

Farther along, we come across the drone’s operator; a dad out with his daughter, playing with his new toy. He is delighted to indulge our curiosity. He brings the drone back over us, hovering right over our heads, and shows us a photograph of us there in the field, staring up at the camera above. It is a surreal moment. After that encounter, we get lost and end up walking through a suburban estate of houses instead of along the cliff path we had originally been on. I think the drone has bewitched us.

Back at the tower, we make dinner, open wine and talk for hours. We keep getting up to look out at the sunset, the sea and the lights of Dublin as they begin to emerge. Every time I get up, I almost fall over the piece of stone in the middle of the floor where the cannon had been fixed, but I like this visceral reminder of the tower’s past. We talk about our lives, dreams we had, and what we want to do in the future. It is as if the round tower is windlassing stories out of us.

It gets later and later, to the point where it is about to be light again. Eventually, the others go to bed. I stay up. I don’t feel tired. I clear up and then open the windows. It has got cold, but I want to hear the pulse of the sea, so close by. I stand there for a long time, listening to the sea, looking out to where the sister Martello tower sits across the other side of the bay, at Seapoint.

I think of my aunt and uncle and of all the times I have left Ireland by boat, and how, in a way, I never really came back. Although I have never viewed the Irish Sea as a portal to elsewhere in the same way I do the Atlantic Ocean, still the Irish Sea has been my magic carpet on many occasions. It makes me feel strangely happy, and unexpectedly hopeful. You could say I have finally made my peace with the Irish Sea.

• For inspiration to plan your next Lesser Spotted Irish break, visit discoverireland.ie
• Monday, July 20th: Lorna Siggins goes seaweed foraging in Kerry

RENT A MARTELLO TOWER

The tower has two double bedrooms and a pull-out single bed in the master. Minimum rental period is for two nights. The tower can be booked all year round. Rates for low season – September to May – are €799 for a weekend, €420 for two nights midweek, and €1,150 for a week. Between June and August, the tower can only be rented weekly, from Saturday to Saturday, for €1,600. Steps are extremely narrow and steep – and there are lots of them – so bear this in mind when booking. Martellotowersutton.com