Beyond them, the path has long since been swallowed by vegetation, and the tower itself now sits surrounded by flat-roofed chalets in a private garden, its rendered exterior peeling away around the doorway, its roof altered with later brickwork. The original circular stone boundary wall has subsided into a low bank. It is, by any measure, an odd domestic arrangement.

This is Rush Martello Tower No. 8, one of twelve such towers constructed north of Dublin beginning in 1804, under the supervision of Colonel Benjamin Fisher of the Royal Engineers. Martello towers are squat, thick-walled cylindrical structures, built in large numbers along the British and Irish coastlines during the Napoleonic Wars as a defence against potential French invasion. By December 1805, all the Dublin-area towers were armed and complete. Each of the twelve northern towers mounted a single 24-pounder cannon; no separate gun batteries were attached to them, unlike some other coastal installations of the period. The Rush tower, catalogued by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, dates to around 1805 and features a tapered profile, a machicolation above the former entrance, which is a projecting parapet opening that would have allowed defenders to observe or drop objects on anyone attempting to force the door, and a west-facing entrance. It was garrisoned by a full complement of artillerymen until the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, after which a single invalid Gunner of the Royal Artillery occupied the structure until at least 1830. The Coast Guard took it over in 1865, and the Minister for Defence sold it in the 1930s.

The tower sits on Harbour Road overlooking the east coast, and the two entrance pillars are visible from the street, though access beyond them is now entirely overgrown. As the site is within a private garden, there is no public entry. What can be appreciated from the road is the outline of the structure itself, and the faint curve of the old boundary bank that once enclosed it. The peeling render and adapted roofline tell their own story of changing uses across two centuries.