The square stone structure, built from roughly coursed sandstone rubble, measures just over 4 metres on each side and climbs to approximately 11 metres in height. Its walls still bear remnants of the original roughcast lime render, whilst dressed limestone lintels with distinctive projecting keystones frame the first-floor windows. The tower’s defensive features remain partially intact; three cut stone corbels mark where a machicolation once protected the first-floor doorway on the northwest wall, accessed originally by retractable ladder, whilst similar corbels at the eastern and southern corners indicate where bartizans once provided additional protection.

The interior reveals a complex multi-level design typical of these military structures, with a semi-basement, ground floor with split mezzanine, first floor, and low attic level that once provided access to the flat roof. Rows of joist holes in the walls tell the story of vanished wooden floors, some still containing fragments of their original timber joists. The southeast wall houses central fireplaces on both main floors, flanked by square-headed alcoves, with the ground floor fireplace featuring a segmental arch constructed from roughly dressed sandstone voussoirs. A clever square-sectioned drainage channel runs down the building’s southern corner, designed to carry rainwater from the roof to storage barrels in the semi-basement; a practical feature for a remote military outpost.

This tower formed part of an ambitious defensive network of over 80 signal stations constructed by the British Board of Ordnance during the first decade of the 1800s, designed to warn of approaching French invasion fleets during the Napoleonic Wars. The stations formed an unbroken chain from Dublin Bay, running clockwise around Ireland’s entire coastline to Malin Head. From Crohy Head, naval signal posts could communicate with the now-collapsed tower at Dawros Head, 12.6 kilometres to the south-southwest, and with Mullaghderg Hill station, 13.2 kilometres to the north-northeast, which remains visible in clear weather. By the mid-1810s, as the French threat receded, the entire system was abandoned, leaving these sturdy towers as monuments to a brief but anxious period in Irish coastal defence. Today, the tower sits amongst enclosed rough pastures defined by low stone walls, with remnants of earlier lazy bed cultivation visible in the surrounding landscape, following the alignment of an even older field system that predates the current agricultural boundaries.