Clare Island Lighthouse

Freestanding single-bay two-stage lighthouse, built 1818; extant 1838, on a circular plan. "Restored", 1909. Decommissioned, 1965. Sold, 2008, to accommodate continued private residential use. Now disused. Limewashed granite ashlar battered walls on cut-granite chamfered plinth with cantilevered walkway on cut-granite thumbnail beaded corbels supporting cast-iron "Serpentine" railings centred on lantern on granite ashlar base. Square-headed window openings with cut-granite sills, and cut-granite lintels framing timber casement windows. Set in own grounds with repointed piers to perimeter having shallow pyramidal capping supporting looped wrought iron double gates.

A lighthouse erected 'by the Corporation for Improving the Port of Dublin' (Lewis 1837 I, 336), and to a design attributable to George Halpin Senior (1776-1854), Inspector of Works and Lighthouses for the Ballast Board (appointed 1810), representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century maritime built heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, one allegedly repurposing the burnt-out shell of a lighthouse built (1806-7) by John Denis Browne (1756-1809), first Marquess of Sligo (Long 1993, 153-4), confirmed by such attributes as the gently tapering silhouette; and the curvilinear iron work encircling the lantern.

Clare Island Lighthouse was built in 1818, decommissioned in 1965 and sold in 2008 for private residential use.