Ye Olde Hurdy-Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio

The Ye Olde Hurdy-Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio in Howth boasts many examples of early Morse equipment, gramophones, crystal sets, valve radios and other pieces of equipment. Additionally, you'll find music boxes, posters, photographs, telegrams, batteries, needle boxes, early TVs, stamps, household items and more. It’s a gadget lover’s paradise.

Pat Herbert began collecting radios and all things connected with communications in the 1950s and amassed this vast private collection. Pat had an encyclopaedic knowledge on the history of radio and was also a great storyteller. He generously allowed the setting up of the amateur station EI0MAR in the Martello Tower

Fittingly, the Martello Tower has historic links with Marconi and Lee DeForest, two of the fathers of wireless, who conducted early experiments from the tower in 1903 and 1905. It was also the site where the first communications cable from Holyhead in Wales to Ireland was laid in 1852. The Howth Martello is one of a network of towers built as lookouts for an expected Napoleonic invasion in 1805.