Martello Tower No. 1

Martello Tower No. 1 stands on cliffs 200 feet above East Wear Bay. It is one of a line of towers built along the Kent and Sussex coasts in 1805-06 in response to the threat of French invasion during the Napoleonic wars. The form of these towers had been inspired by a single circular tower at Cape Mortella, Corsica, which the British Navy attacked in 1794 and found difficult to take. Lines of martello towers were subsequently built along the Suffolk-Essex and Kent-Sussex coasts, with others constructed in Scotland and Ireland. The towers were sited to protect possible invasion beaches and located so that adjoining towers provided interlocking fields of fire.

The tower is built of brick. Its plan is externally slightly elliptical with sides sloping inwards towards the top, but internally circular with a massive central column. Martello tower walls generally vary in thickness around the circumference, with thicker walls facing the sea. The exterior has been refaced with brick. Windows are set at first floor level, and a door and windows have been inserted at ground floor level. The tower would originally have been entered at first floor level via a retractable ladder, where the original door opening survives, but access is now through the ground floor.

The windows are regularly pierced all round the tower, narrower on the landward side and wider on the seaward side because of the elliptical plan. A floor is currently being added to the top of the tower: a circular breeze block wall, faced with brick, rises approximately 2 metres above the top of the tower. The new roof rests on a structure of steel girders supported on steel uprights set into the wall, sloping gently down from a central apex.

All interior walls are brick, as is the massive central column, which is constrained on the first floor by seven steel bands. The ground floor space has been subdivided as part of residential conversion. A wooden stair has been constructed to the first floor, and the timber floor forming the ceiling to the ground floor has been reconstructed. The first floor has unplastered brick walls, a central column, and a vaulted ceiling. An arched opening leads into a recess with a window set in the thickness of the wall. The original stairway, also set into the wall thickness, gives access to the gun platform on the original roof. A brick parapet surmounted by stone surrounds the gun emplacement. Above this, the outer walls for the upper storey are being constructed. A concrete ledge or walkway below the parapet surrounds a slightly sunken concrete gun platform with its racer—a curved grooved iron track to allow smooth turning of the gun carriage—and a surviving central circular gun pillar, into which is also cut a tracking groove. Set into the parapet at regular intervals are six blocks of stone holding restraining rings. The whole of the gun emplacement is to be preserved and covered over by the new floor. The top of a chimney appears above the parapet against the new wall.

The towers continued in use through the early 19th century, becoming obsolete during the latter part of the century. Little is known of the history of Tower No. 1 since the Napoleonic wars. It was described as unoccupied and missing its outer brickwork in 1873. Although it may have been occupied during the Second World War, no alterations or additions were made to it at that time, and it was abandoned soon afterwards.

The tower was included in the Schedule of Ancient Monuments in 1949 with the other two towers above East Wear Bay as KE 83, Three Martello Towers, East Cliff. Scheduled Monument Consent for work to convert the tower to domestic use was granted in the 1980s, with permission for additional work granted in 2002. Tower No. 1 is one of only 26 that survive of the original line of 74 on the Kent and Sussex coasts.