The Old Head Signal Tower was built during the Napoleonic Wars in response to the threat of French invasion. It is No. 25 of 81 such towers. They were strategically located with line-of-sight visibility from one to the next along the coastline, such that any sighting of an invasion fleet could be quickly passed on to Dublin.

Today, the tower houses the Lusitania Museum, which tells the story of the sinking of the trans-Atlantic liner RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the nearby Old Head of Kinsale during WW1.