Martello Tower (Barbuda)
official historic site of Antigua and Barbuda
The Martello Tower, also known as River Fort, is a former defensive fort located on a beach about three miles south of Codrington, Barbuda on River Road. The tower is said to be the oldest martello tower in the Caribbean and served as a prototype for future martello towers. At 56 ft (17 m) tall, the tower is the tallest building in Barbuda.
The tower was built during the Napoleonic Wars to protect Barbuda's southern coast and anchorage. Some documents say the fort was built on the site of a former Spanish fort built in 1745. Its design does resemble Spanish towers of the same time period. However, archeological analysis of the structure's timber suggests that the fort may have originally been built by British admiral Charles Knowles in the 1740s.
The public source identifies “Martello Tower (Barbuda)” as official historic site of Antigua and Barbuda. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Martello, Tower and Barbuda.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martello Tower (Barbuda)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.