Tower No. 7
Where did all the Cannon go?
Did you ever wonder what happened to all those cannon from the Martello Towers and Batteries which were decommissioned in the 1840s?
Well I didn't, not really. I assumed they had been melted down or just got lost.
However, when I read Niall O'Donoghues very tastefully produced brochure for Heritage Week dealing with Tower No. 7, I learned that many of the cannon are still to be seen in the form of bollards outside Beggars Bush Barracks on Haddington Road in Dublin.
So I went and had a look, with results you can see below.
It is impossible to tell if there are crests on these cannon or, if so, what they are. The cannon are covered with many layers of paint, but I thought I could manually detect a little more irregularity on some of the cannon at those points where the crest would be. However, I understand from a reliable source, that when two of the cannon were dug up during sewerage works in the 1970s, one, at least, turned out to be a George III cannon with crest.