extensively inscribed with a dedication to his daughter Monica and inscribed with location and date "May 8 1902"
Martello Tower No.6 Sandgate
This Martello Tower is located close to Shorncliffe Camp. It is in a deep, heavily overgrown moat and is currently empty. It is located above a steep, south facing slope, overlooking Sandgate and the sea beyond.
Built in 1806, the tower is one of a clifftop series of six moated towers, constructed in 1805-6 to defend the coastline between Hythe and Folkestone, and lies around 360m north east of Tower no 7.
The external face of the tower was rendered in a cement mortar, or stucco, which served to strengthen the outer skin of bricks, and traces of this survive.
Martello Tower No.6
Access into the tower is by way of a first-floor doorway to the north, which was originally approached by a footbridge which spanned the moat.
The section nearest the tower was designed as a drawbridge, capable of being raised to seal the entrance. The bridge does not survive, although part of the mechanism used to raise it remains in place.
Lionel Grimston Fawkes, grandson of Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes (an MP and patron of Turner), began his military training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he became professor of military topography there... By 1883 he was Dominic Gamble’s aide-de-camp in Jamaica. In 1885 he entered Staff College, Sandhurst. He became a Colonel in the Royal Artillery and later a Justice of the Peace. In 1891 he married Lady Constance Eleanor Kennedy, daughter of a Scottish peer. He was Professor of Military Topography at the Royal Military Academy from 1895 to 1900. By 1923 he and his wife had moved to Canada, purchasing the Point Comfort Hotel on Mayne Island and changing its name to Culzean after Constance’s ancestral home, Culzean Castle. They remained at Culzean for the rest of their lives.
Colonel Fawkes was a very accomplished artist and illustrator. His water-colours are held in collections around the world. Their married daughter, Lois died in 1919 leaving a one year old son Lawrence. Tragedy struck the Fawkes family again in 1921, when their other daughter, Monica, also died. This was all too much for the Colonel and Lady Constance and in 1924 they emigrated to Mayne Island, British Columbia with their son-in-law and grandson.