Beaumont Tower

The story

St Aubin's Bay No. 3, the westernmost of the three Conway towers that once guarded the bay, built in the 1780s to cover the approach to St Aubin, then the island's main harbour. It is the standard pattern: round, tapered, worked granite, two upper floors ringed with musketry loopholes and four machicolations on the parapet. The original doorway is still there at first-floor level, reached by ladder; the ground-floor door came later. In 1797 it held a sergeant, a corporal and ten men of the Invalids; by 1840 the inventory ran to one 18-pounder carronade on a wooden traversing platform, barracks for thirteen and a magazine for twenty barrels of powder. In 1922 it was sold for £300 together with the land by Beaumont railway station. During the Occupation the Germans put a French Hotchkiss anti-aircraft machine gun on the roof. Listed Grade 1, and now owned by the States.