The Prince of Wales Tower is the oldest martello tower in North America and is located in Point Pleasant Park, Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada. [1] It was built in 1796 by Captain James Straton and was used as a redoubt and a powder magazine. Restored, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1943. [2] [3]
In 1796-97, Edward, Duke of Kent had a battery built to defend the point batteries. A few years later, the battery was converted to a large round stone tower known as the Prince of Wales Tower, similar to the Martello Towers built in large numbers elsewhere by the British military. The Prince of Wales Tower is named after Edward's eldest brother, the future George IV of the United Kingdom.
There were five Martello Towers built in Halifax, the Prince of Wales Tower being the last remaining Tower. [4]
The Prince of Wales Tower is 26 feet high and is 72 feet in diameter. The exposed material is ironstone rubble masonry, with 8-foot-thick (2.4 m) walls. The tower is a squat, round structure built of stone, almost three times as wide as it is high. The original construction allowed for six mounted guns on the roof and four guns on the second storey. The second storey was intended for barrack use and the ground floor for storage. The tower is 72 feet in diameter and the walls at the base are 8 feet thick. The tower could accommodate 200 soldiers. [5]
Further modifications were made over the next seventy years. By 1813, the Tower mounted four 6-pound guns on garrison carriages on its barrack level, two 24-pound guns on traversing platforms and six 24-pound cannonades on traversing slides on top. After 1864, the Tower was used as a self-defensible depot magazine. [6] The roof was replaced in 2016.
Citadel Hill is a hill that is a National Historic Site in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Four fortifications have been constructed on Citadel Hill since the city was founded by the English in 1749, and were referred to as Fort George—but only the third fort was officially named Fort George. According to General Orders of October 20, 1798, it was named after King George III. The first two and the fourth and current fort, were officially called the Halifax Citadel. The last is a concrete star fort.
Martello towers, sometimes known simply as Martellos, are small defensive forts that were built across the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the French Revolutionary Wars onwards. Most were coastal forts.
Shakespeare by the Sea is a professional theatre company and registered charitable society in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Shoreham Redoubt is a historical military defensive structure and scheduled monument at the entrance to Shoreham harbour, at the mouth of the River Adur in West Sussex, England. It was planned in the 1850s during a period of political alarm in the United Kingdom. Construction of the fort was completed in June 1857 at a cost of £11,685. The design is similar to that of Littlehampton Fort, which had been built in 1854.
Point Pleasant Park is a large, mainly forested municipal park at the southern tip of the Halifax peninsula. It once hosted several artillery batteries, and still contains the Prince of Wales Tower - the oldest Martello tower in North America (1796). The park is a popular recreational spot for Haligonians, as it hosts forest walks and affords views across the harbour and out toward the Atlantic.
Province House in Halifax is where the Nova Scotia legislative assembly, known officially as the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, has met every year since 1819, making it the longest serving legislative building in Canada. The building is Canada's oldest house of government. Standing three storeys tall, the structure is considered one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in North America.
Fort Denison, part of the Sydney Harbour National Park, is a protected national park that is a heritage-listed former penal site and defensive facility occupying a small island located north-east of the Royal Botanic Garden and approximately 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) east of the Opera House in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales, Australia. The island is also known as Mattewanye or Muddawahnyuh in the Eora language, and as Pinchgut Island.
The Westin Nova Scotian is a Canadian hotel located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, owned and operated by New Castle Hotels and Resorts. It was built in 1928 by the Canadian National Railway as the Nova Scotian Hotel and after several changes of owners and names in the late 20th century became the Westin Nova Scotian in 1996.
The Town Clock, also sometimes called the Old Town Clock or Citadel Clock Tower, is a clock tower located at Fort George in the urban core of Halifax, the capital city of Nova Scotia.
McNabs Island is the largest island in Halifax Harbour located in Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada. It played a major role in defending Halifax Harbour and is now a provincial park. The island was settled by Britons in the 1750s and later by Peter McNab, and McNab family members lived on the island until 1934.
St Mawes Castle is an artillery fort constructed by Henry VIII near Falmouth, Cornwall, between 1540 and 1542. It formed part of the King's Device programme to protect against invasion from France and the Holy Roman Empire, and defended the Carrick Roads waterway at the mouth of the River Fal. The castle was built under the direction of Thomas Treffry to a clover leaf design, with a four-storey central tower and three protruding, round bastions that formed gun platforms. It was initially armed with 19 artillery pieces, intended for use against enemy shipping, operating in partnership with its sister castle of Pendennis on the other side of the estuary. During the English Civil War, St Mawes was held by Royalist supporters of King Charles I, but surrendered to a Parliamentary army in 1646 in the final phase of the conflict.
York Redoubt is a redoubt situated on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Halifax Harbour at Ferguson's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, originally constructed in 1793. It was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1962.
Chebucto Head is a Canadian headland on Nova Scotia's Chebucto Peninsula located within the community of Duncan's Cove.
Carleton Martello Tower in Saint John, New Brunswick, is one of the nine surviving Martello Towers in Canada. The tower dates from the War of 1812 and played a significant role in conflicts until the Second World War. The site now features a restored powder magazine, a restored barracks room, and exhibits in the tower and in the visitor centre. The tower's roof offers a view of the city of Saint John and its harbour. Carleton Martello Tower is one of the oldest buildings in the city and has been designated as a National Historic Site of Canada since 1930. It has been open to the public since 1963.
Grain Tower is a mid-19th-century gun tower situated offshore just east of Grain, Kent, standing in the mouth of the River Medway. It was built along the same lines as the Martello towers that were constructed along the British and Irish coastlines in the early 19th century and is the last-built example of a gun tower of this type. It owed its existence to the need to protect the important dockyards at Sheerness and Chatham from a perceived French naval threat during a period of tension in the 1850s.
The Grand Parade is a historic military parade square dating from the founding of Halifax in 1749. At the north end of the Grand Parade, is the Halifax City Hall, the seat of municipal government in Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality. At the south end is St. Paul's Church. In the middle of Grand Parade is the cenotaph built originally to commemorate the soldiers who served in World War I.
Devils Battery or Devils Point Battery, Hartlen Point or Hartlen Point Tunnels, was a complex military installation at the mouth of Halifax Harbour in the community of Eastern Passage at Hartlen Point, Canada. It was built between 1940 and 1945 to protect the Halifax area against the German navy. It was operational until the 1950s. The site had three 9.2 inch (234 mm) breech-loading Mark X guns, operated by the 53rd Heavy Battery of the 1st (Halifax) Coast Regiment. It is now a golf course; the original underground armaments remain buried. Devils Battery was named for Devils Island which is adjacent to the embankment of Hartlen's Point.
Fort Clarence was a British coastal fort built in 1754 at the beginning of the French and Indian War in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. The battery was built on the grant of Capt. John Rous. Governor Edward Cornwallis’ principal engineer John Brewse designed the fort which was 35 to 40 feet above sea level - at the start there was a small battery of seven 12-pounder smooth bore cannon. In spring 1759, a Mi'kmaq attack on the Eastern Battery killed five soldiers.
The Black-Binney House was a former residence built in 1819 in Halifax, Nova Scotia which is now a National Historic Site of Canada. The house was built by John Black (merchant) and is reflective of the Palladian-inspired residences common during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Eastern Canada. In 1857, Hibbert Binney subdivided the property to build the St. Matthew's United Church (Halifax). In 1965 Sidney Culverwell Oland purchased and renovated the building to house the Nova Scotia Division of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires.
Knockalla Fort is one of several Napoleonic batteries built along the shores of Lough Swilly in county Donegal, to defend the north west of Ireland. It was part of a scheme to fortify Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle against French Invasion during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and was completed between 1812 and 1813. On the other side of the Lough is Fort Dunree. The fort was built on the site of a temporary fortification first built in 1798.
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