Scrabo Tower v0.1
Scrabo Tower is a 135 feet (41 m) high 19th-century lookout tower or folly that stands on Scrabo Hill near Newtownards in County Down, Northern Ireland. It provides wide views and is a landmark that can be seen from afar.
It was built as a memorial to Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry and was originally known as the Londonderry Monument. Its architectural style is Scottish Baronial Revival.
The tower commemorates the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who was born Charles William Stewart in 1788 and fought in the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1854, when the 3rd Marquess died, his eldest son, Frederick Stewart, 4th Marquess of Londonderry, and his widow, the dowager marchioness, decided to build him a monument. As these two were not at good terms, each conceived and pushed his or her own project. Two monuments resulted: the Irish tower discussed here and an equestrian statue in Durham, England.
The 5th Baron Dufferin and Claneboye, a neighbour of the Londonderrys, had recently built Helen’s Tower, also in the Scottish Baronial style, on the next hill to the north of Scrabo: the new tower was to have more than double the height of theirs.
After the tower’s completion in 1859, William McKay, a foreman of the quarry, moved into the tower as caretaker. His family ran a tearoom in the tower until 1966 despite the lack of water at the top of the hill. The tower and the grounds on which it stands were then acquired by the state.
In 1977, the tower was listed as a Grade B+ historic building. The tower now stands in the Scrabo Country Park, which is managed by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). In 2014, the NIEA announced that water ingress had damaged the electricity supply, and citing safety concerns, closed the tower to visitors. By 2015, the tower opened occasionally, and in 2017 it was fully reopened to the public.
The tower was recreated manually from various photos and videos from the internet. It comes with its own POI and features two aircraft warning lights at its top.
GPS Coordinates: 54.58031060536848, -5.7154117706538505
