Ouaisne tower

Ouaisne Tower

This tower is in Ouaisne Bay and is now privately owned. It was built before 1787. It is somewhat unusual for the Conway design towers, having been built a few metres from the shore, rather than on the edge of the beach

HER entry

Along with all Jersey's other coastal towers and historic fortifications it is a listed building, described as follows in the Jersey Heritage Historic Environment Record website:

Important example of late 18th century Conway Tower in a setting little changed from its original and surrounded by a still largely natural landscape. The tower is significant as an integral part of a group of surviving Conway towers in Jersey that not only illustrates the changing political and strategic military history of the Island in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but represents a turning point in the history of defence strategy across Europe, and global trends in the history of war. Shown on the Richmond Map of 1795.

Standard Conway Tower pattern. Round and tapered, built of regular squared and well-tooled blocks of granite. The upper floors are punctuated with musketry loopholes, with granite dressed ventilation windows on each floor, and a dressed granite doorway raised at first floor level.

There are four machicolations at parapet level. Stone paved roof platform with masonry parapet. Additional doorway inserted at ground floor (now blocked). The tower is arranged internally on four levels, with a brick vaulted magazine at ground floor, 2 floors above with circuits of musketry loopholes, and a gun roof platform above.