Built around 1804 during the Napoleonic Wars, it formed part of an impressive chain of over 80 signal stations that stretched from Dublin Bay clockwise around Ireland’s coast to Malin Head. The tower’s strategic position, roughly 100 metres south of an ancient promontory fort, offered unobstructed views in almost every direction; only the rising ground to the south blocked the sightline. From here, sentries could communicate with similar towers at Horn Head, 12.8 kilometres to the west-southwest, and at Fanad Head, 10.1 kilometres to the east-northeast, where a lighthouse now stands in place of the original signal tower.

The square tower, which originally stood two storeys tall and measured 5.8 metres on each side, has largely collapsed into rubble. What remains tells a story of solid construction: rubble stone masonry walls with a pronounced batter, small buttresses reinforcing the western foundations, and traces of mortared brickwork amongst the debris. The most intact sections include portions of the western wall and a curious narrow pillar of stonework rising from the eastern wall, likely the remnant of masonry between two ground floor windows. The spread of collapsed material, extending furthest down the northern slope, suggests the tower fell in that direction when it finally gave way to time and the elements.

The tower sits within a rectangular stone enclosure, itself now mostly reduced to foundations. Two small buildings once stood within this compound; one in the southeast corner, shown on 1830s Ordnance Survey maps and likely contemporary with the tower’s active period, and another in the southwest corner, possibly added after the signal system was abandoned in the mid-1810s when Napoleon’s threat to invade had passed. Today, these structures exist only as grassed-over wall footings with protruding stones, while the enclosure walls connect to longer stock-control walls that snake across the rough pasture towards the steep cliffs that define this dramatic headland.