Helen’s Tower

Helen’s Tower, here I stand,

Dominant over sea and land,

Son’s love built me, and I hold

Mother’s love in letter’d gold.

Love is in and out of time,

I am mortal stone and lime.

Would my granite girth were strong

As either love, to last as long

I should wear my crown entire

To and thro’ the Doomsday fire,

And be found of angel eyes

In earth’s recurring Paradise

Alfred Tennyson 1861

Helen’s Tower was designed in 1848 by William Burn in the Scottish style and construction was completed in october 1861. It was part of an ambitious landscape project by Lord Dufferin covering the five miles between the \tower and the coast at Helen’s Bay. The tower was named in honour of his mother Helen, who was a granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great irish playwright, orator and politician.

It was built as an idyllic retreat and poems were written in it’s honour by Tennyson, kipling, Argyll and other luminaries of the nineteenth century literary world.

However, the tower took on an unforeseen poignancy after the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The land around the tower had been used as a training camp by the 36th (Ulster) Division prior to their embarkation from Belfast to France and, for those soldiers, helen’s Tower would have been a lasting image as they sailed out of Belfast Lough. For this reason in 1921 funds were raised by the families of the fallen and an exact replica, the Ulster Tower, built on battlefield at Thiepval.

The woods that surround Helen’s Tower were first planted at the time that the tower was built. Parts of the woodland contain their original trees whilst other areas were replanted in the early 1980s. The woods were designed to enhance the romantis feeling of the tower, although it would have been many years before Lord Dufferin’s vision grew into the magical place that one experiences today.

In 1985 Clandeboye Estate, in conjunction with the North Down Borough Council, opened a public footpath, now known as the Clandeboye Way, which leads from Helen’s Bay, beside Bridge House,  up through the woods, past the Tower and down to the Somme Heritage Centre at Conlig.