The Round House on Bathsheba beach in Barbados is nearly 200 years old. Built as a family home, it’s now an inn –
19th century
round houses of snow
An Inuit (Eskimo) village, as seen in 1861 –
The illustration is from Charles Francis Hall’s Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux, published in 1865.
ye olde round house
The 19th century Theberton Round House –
In Theberton, Leiston, Suffolk, England.
windmill house
A former windmill, now a private home, is for sale in Leeds, England. Here is how it looked in the early 1900s –
The windmill was built in the mid to late 18th century. A 1789 lease between the Earl of Mexborough, Peter Garforth and William Burrows makes reference to a “windmill lately built, Scott Hall Gate Close, (in possession of Joseph Ingle) and newly erected dwelling place.”
The windmill is thought to have been converted to residential use in the late 19th century. A Leeds directory from 1882 states that the house was occupied by David Lee, market gardener, and called Windmill House. Now known as the Round House, it can be yours for £295,000.
on the market
An early 19th century Martello tower in Suffolk, England, is now on the market. Built as a rampart against a feared French invasion — one of 11 Martello towers that still line the Suffolk coast — it was converted to a residence in 2010. Architect Stuart Piercy and designer Duncan Jackson collaborated on the project, creating “one of the most original and soul-stirring modern homes in Britain.”
The asking price is £995,000 (about $1.58 million). If you can’t afford to buy it, you may be able to rent it for a holiday.
greetings from long beach
The curving rooms of the Portland Hotel, in Long Beach, Washington, hosted thousands of guests during the hotel’s 30 years of existence –
Built in the 1880s, the building burned down on December 6, 1914.
19th century fortress (and 21st century modernist showpiece) for rent
A defensive fortress from the Napoleonic era was converted in 2009 to a private residence –
Made up of some 750,000 bricks, with immensely thick walls, Martello Tower Y was originally built in 1808 as a coastal outpost against an expected invasion from Napoleon’s France. The years passed, the French attack never came, and the building fell into disrepair. It was totally derelict when renovations began, 200 years after its construction.
round vacation
What better place for a summer vacation than a cool round house overlooking the beach? The Water Tower, just off the Pacific Coast Highway in Sunset Beach, California, supplied water to the surrounding area until 1974. Here it is in 1966, in its original state, with a curvy ’60s VW bug in the foreground –
the omphalos
Do you pay rent for this tower?
Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
… Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
James Joyce spent six days staying with a couple of friends in a Martello tower in Sandy Cove, Dublin, in 1904, and later set the first chapter of his novel Ulysses there. Built during the Napoleonic era as a defensive position against a feared French invasion, the tower is one of a string of Martello towers in England, Ireland, and Wales.
Now known as the James Joyce Tower, it has been made into a museum, and furnished as it was during Joyce’s time there. For Joyce devotees who make the pilgrimage to visit it, the tower may indeed be an omphalos, a sacred conical object.
round houses 