Ye Olde Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio

The tower was built in 1805, one of the many towers built along the Irish coast to guard against a possible Napoleonic invasion,[2] and has long been associated with the history of radio transmission in Ireland and beyond.[3] From 1825, the tower was used by the Preventative Water Guard (now the Irish Coast Guard) in its anti-smuggling work.[1]

The tower was the terminus of the first telegraph connecting Wales to Ireland in 1852.[2] The first successful wireless radio transmission by Lee de Forest on 23 November 1903 was also conducted from this tower.[3] Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated his technology using a high aerial to communicate with a ship in 1905.[1] From 1922, the tower was used by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, then Telecom Éireann until the 1980s when it was sold to Dublin City Council.[1]

The tower was refurbished in 2001,[1] with the museum opening in 2003, and is based around the collections of curator Pat Herbert[3] who has been collecting for over 60 years.[4] The name of the museum is an homage to a remark by Taoiseach Seán Lemass, who asked an RTÉ radio controller in the 1950s "How's the hurdy gurdy?".[5]

The exhibition includes artefacts relating to all forms of communication and related Irish historical events, [2] including radios, early televisions, gramophones, and records.[3] The Morse code-based amateur radio station, EI0MAR, operates from the museum.[6] The story of curator Herbert and the museum was the subject of a 10-minute award winning film in 2014, Hurdy Gurdy Man.[4][7]

• Discover Ireland
• Curious Ireland
• Tower's entry in the Inventory of Architectural Heritage