Narapadu Old Dutch Watch Tower (Mannar)

Old Dutch Watch Tower, Narapadu
Photo credit: Google street view

The tower located in Narapadu in Mannar District, Sri Lanka is an old watchtower built by the Dutch.

History
During the period between 1658-1796, most of the coastal areas in Sri Lanka were controlled by the Dutch and they built this tower on Mannar Island to be used as a watchtower (Asanga & Nishantha, 2018).

Tower
The brick-built tower is about 10 m tall and has been erected on a quadrangle foundation which is about 4.5 m in length and width (Asanga & Nishantha, 2018). The tower is circular in shape and gets smaller as it rises from the bottom to the top. The diameter of the bottom part of the tower is about 4 m (Asanga & Nishantha, 2018).

The tower can be entered through an arched shaped entrance of about 2 m tall and 80 cm wide (Asanga & Nishantha, 2018). A spiral staircase runs upward till more than half of the tower. The upper part of the tower has been made of coral stones (Asanga & Nishantha, 2018).

A protected monument
The Dutch guard post in Narapadu in the Grama Niladhari Division of Narapadu in Mannar Divisional Secretary’s Division is an archaeological protected monument, declared by a government Gazette notification published on 16 August 2013.

References
1) Asanga, M. V. G. K.; Nishantha, I. P. S., 2018. Mannarama Distrikkaya (In Sinhala). Department of Archaeology (Sri Lanka). ISBN: 978-955-7457-10-9. pp.72-73.
2) The Gazette of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka: Extraordinary. No: 1823/73. 16 August 2013. p.7A.

Location Map

This page was last updated on 5 April 2023
Previous Post Next Post