Other Shot Towers
The Chester Shot Tower is one of only three such structures to remain in the UK. Although shot towers were very common during the 19th century across the country (two appear in the London skyline in John Constable's 1832 painting, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge), the Chester tower is the only surviving example which dates from the 18th or 19th centuries. Other early shot towers include the Jackson Ferry Shot Tower (c.1807), an example of a stone shot tower in Wythe County, Virginia, and the brick Sparks Shot Tower in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1808), both in the US.
The other British examples still standing date from the 20th century. The Cheese Lane Tower in Bristol, a reinforced concrete tower, was constructed in 1969 to replace Watts' original shot tower in Redcliffe, which was demolished in 1968. A military look-out post in Tynemouth dating from 1916 is also believed to have doubled as a shot tower. The so-called Crane Park Shot Tower at Twickenham is no longer thought to have been used for this purpose.
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