Martello Towers
Preserved but no longer current.
Round towers about forty feet in height, of great strength, and situated on a coast or river-bank. Many of them were built on the south-eastern coasts of England about 1804, to repel the threatened Napoleonic invasion; and they took their name from Mortella (Corsica), where a tower from which these were designed had proved, in 1794, extremely difficult to capture.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “Martello Towers” mean?
Round towers about forty feet in height, of great strength, and situated on a coast or river-bank. Many of them were built on the south-eastern coasts of England about 1804, to repel the threatened Napoleonic invasion; and they took their name from Mortella (Corsica), where a tower from which these were designed had proved, in 1794, extremely difficult to capture.
Is “Martello Towers” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.