Newport Tower (Rhode Island)

The Newport Mill (english Newport Mill, Round Tower, Touro Tower, Newport Stone Tower, Old Stone Mill ( OSM), Mystery Tower ) is a built from rubble stone building in Touro Park in Newport, Rhode Iceland. The building has given rise to numerous, sometimes abstruse speculations about its builders occasion.

Specifications

The tower stands on a hill above the harbor of Newport in the middle of a small park on the lined with historic buildings from the colonial period Bellevue Avenue. An information board at the park entrance includes a brief description with the indication that it is a historic mill from the 17th century.

Today, the exterior walls of the building are still preserved. The round tower is built from largely untouched and unprocessed rubble nearby. He is about 8.5 meters high and measures outside about 7 feet in diameter, the walls are about 1 meter thick. From recesses in masonry for wood-beamed ceilings in the interior, one can conclude that the building originally had two floors. The lower floor is constructed with eight open arches than arcade. It is supported by brick, about 3.5 meters high round pillars. It was formerly an apparently built of wooden beams pad with a wooden floor also. Remains of which have not survived. In the upper floor there is a simple, rectangular window. On the inner wall of a fireplace and several brick niches can be seen. The window is aligned so that you originally had a good overview of the Narragansett Bay, which today is, however, obscured by tall trees.

History

With high probability, the tower in the second half of the 17th century by order of Benedict Arnold ( 1615-1678 ), a governor of the colony of Rhode Iceland, built. His father, William Arnold was born in Leamington, Warwickshire, United Kingdom. The Arnold family emigrated to America in 1635 and Benedict was in 1663 governor of Rhode Iceland. 1675 burned the wooden windmill down in Newport and Arnold had the new stone mill along the lines of an existing in Chesterton, near his place of origin mill build.

Built 1632-33 mill in Chesterton has a striking resemblance to the tower in Newport. The only difference is that the Chesterton Mill has six arches and four windows and is built of carefully hewn blocks of stone. Meanwhile, it was restored with funds from the National Trust and with a reconstruction of the roof and windmills.

Arnold writes in his will of 1678, which is preserved in a copy from the 17th century in the Redwood Library, literally "my stone build- windmill " ( "my stone windmill " ), which he bequeathed to his descendants. On a contemporary map of Rhode Iceland from 1776, which is preserved in the Redwood Library, Newport, a stone mill above Newport is located.

1948/49, led a team of archaeologists from Harvard University under the direction of William Godfrey and Hugh Henken on the tower and extensive excavations. We have not found exclusively artifacts from the 17th century ( ceramic and glass shards, clay pipes and the flint of a flintlock musket ).

In the year 1992, before a Danish- Finnish team of experts radiocarbon datings of the mortar. They suggest a construction period 1698-1735.

Speculation

Since the 19th century there are numerous, more or less serious speculation, who could have built the structure. Subsequently some of them are summarized without evaluating their seriousness:

Irish

The Irish monk Brendan to be traveled in the 6th century with twelve companions from Ireland through the islands, which are interpreted as the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands and Iceland to the " Promised Land " to the west. This was the conclusion of the American cartographer Arlington H. Mallery (not Mallerey how Däniken writes ) after evaluation of the primary rice card. The theory was taken up by Erich von Däniken and disseminated. Däniken writes to the construction of the Newport Tower St. Brendan or his companions, and points to the similarity with the Irish round towers.

Knights Templar

Andrew Sinclair, a British all-rounder and the author of numerous popular science books, fantasy novels and short stories, claiming that the tower was by the Knights Templar under the leadership of Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, as a kind of monument or milestone to prove their presence built been. Sinclair, allegedly a member of the Knights Templar, have Greenland and the East Coast almost one hundred years before Christopher Columbus explored.

Portuguese

The psychologist Edmund Burke Dela Barre (1863-1945) of Brown University in Providence (Rhode Iceland ) was the basis of studies of the Dighton Rock, a in Taunton River at Berkley (Massachusetts ) discovered, 40 -ton rock with mysterious inscriptions, to the view, the tower was built by the Portuguese captain João Vaz Corte-Real as an observation and signal tower.

Chinese

The British writer and former submarine captain Gavin Menzies claims in his book 1421 - The Year China Discovered the World, the tower was built by the Imperial Chinese admirals Zhou Wen, Zhou Man and Hong Bao, which even before the American continent Christoph Columbus had discovered.

Native Americans

In the edition of the Providence Journal on August 31, 1918 claimed Chief Strong Heart, the chief of the Yakima Indians, the tower was built by the Narragansett Indians as a place of worship.

Others

• The Newport Tower was on the crest of the landing ship USS Newport (now ARM Papaloapan the Mexican Navy ) mapped.
• The Newport Tower plays an important role in the novel The Red Rover ( German Title: The red privateer) by James Fenimore Cooper.