Tower 74 was the final part of the south coast Martello chain, and, according to popular belief, was not built until about 1810. This is incorrect, as Twiss reported in May 1806:
"Seaford Tower - Not yet begun"
and in May 1808:
"Seaford Tower, Guns not mounted, Parapet coped with Brick, Floors and steps laid, Lattice Work, Doors and Cisterns fixed, Light Room complete, Magazine, Partitions to Officers Quarters, and Bedsteads finished, Counterscarp built and Glascis formed, Fastenings to Officers Quarters wanting."
The 1798 plan devised by a Captain Reynolds of the Royal engineers (see the Towers Planned page) to build a chain of towers towards Littlehampton never materialised, probably due to cost and because the invasion scare had receded. Reynold's line was superceded by Twiss's line which stopped at Seaford - the cost of the Tower 74 alone was a staggering £18,000, making it the most expensive. As a result of the original 73 towers and 2 redoubts the price of bricks had gone up, but Twiss had no intention of extending the line further, as there were gun batteries already in place. There was one such battery on the cliffs at Seaford Head overlooking Tower 74, and a five-gun battery to the west on the beach.
The tower was occupied by the Coast Blockade from April 1824, but by the end of the year, four of those stationed in the tower had been lost. On December 6, a boat was upset close offshore, the bodies of Richard Wood and John Leary being quickly recovered. It was a month before John Ryan was buried, and William Enyion was not washed ashore until January, a few miles up the coast. It is not known whether they were trying to rescue a vessel in danger or catch smugglers, but there had been fierce storms two weeks previously, which had left Tower 74 as the only building left standing on Seaford seafront.
By 1828, the tower was occupied by the men of the Customs Cutter HMS Hyperion, the tower being used for the temporary imprisonment of captured smugglers.
The tower was later used in 1850 by a company of Sappers and Miners who were detailed to explode part of the nearby cliff-face of Seaford Head to create a groyne from the fallen debris on the beach below. Too much powder was used, and the attempt failed as the small fragments of rock were washed away rapidly.
In 1880 the tower was bought from the Government by a Mr. J.E. Lee, whose family had been involved in the construction of the tower 70 years previously, and between 1880 and 1911, he opened open the tower as a museum. Admission to the tower was 2d.
In 1881 the Seaford Bay Estate Company incorporated the tower and its moat into the first seawall to be built along the beach, and plans were made to convert the tower into a seawater swimming bath, with a roofed open-air library for reading whilst protected from the sun. Plans for a pier also came to nothing, but for some reason, it was decided to dismount the cannon in 1882. This met with disaster, as the gun slipped from its tackle, and smashed straight through the drawbridge and into the moat.
In 1911 a Mr. Tom Funnell bought the tower for £600 before being reopening it as a cafe and amusement arcade. Public baths were created on the ground floor. The shattered drawbridge was replaced, a concrete floor and staircase replacing the wooden boards and ladder, and the moat floor concreted to become a roller-skating rink around the tower. A stone balustrade was erected around the top of the moat.
In 1935 the east window was converted into an entrance, a railway carriage cleverly installed in place of the bridge across the moat, and the seaward half of the moat roofed over to become part of the promenade, with a canopy overhead. A large flat was subsequently added to the roof in 1922, which altered the tower's appearence drastically.
Mr. Funnell had leased the tower to a Mr. Williams in 1938, but after the latter's death the tower was requisitoned by the War Department. The tower was occupied by the military during the Second World War, and after being derequisitioned, Mr. Funnell applied to reopen the amusement arcade, but met with hostility from some of the locals.
The tower was auctioned off for £6,000 in 1948 and bought by the local council, who planned to use it as a solarium, and use part of the moat as a swimming pool. Again,these plans never went further, but in 1950 the canopy over the southern half of the moat was partly enclosed as opened as a cafe with an amusement arcade opened in 1963.
In 1979, Lewes District Council removed the canopy from the promenade and the flat from the roof and carried out renovation work and the tower was finally opened as Seaford Local History Museum, as it currently remains. The southern half of the moat was totally enclosed, and new entrances from the tower into this area made to increase exhibition space. A replica carriage was constructed to mount a 32-pounder cannon, but this makes the gun sit too high on the tower and it looks a little odd, as does the fact that the tower has no windows, the eastern one being the museum entrance.
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