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.

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

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.