Howth Harbour Lighthouse, East Pier, Howth, Co. Dublin

What catches the eye is the way the tower carries a second life at its base: a keeper's house grafted onto its south-east flank, granite ashlar to match, as though the whole structure grew from one idea rather than two separate jobs of building.

The lighthouse dates to 1817, its construction recorded in a wall plaque still legible on the tower. The keeper's house, originally a single storey, was raised to two storeys in 1856, presumably to give the keeper and his family more room as the harbour's traffic and importance grew. For over a century a keeper would have tended the light by hand, a routine that ended in 1955 when the lighthouse was converted to unattended electric operation, part of a broader move across the Irish coast to automate lights that had previously depended on someone climbing the tower stair each evening. The projecting observation deck near the top is carried on granite corbels, blocks of stone set into the wall and cantilevered outward to bear the weight of the platform above, a small piece of structural engineering doing quiet work under the lantern's ironwork.

Details on the ground repay a slower look than the tower itself might suggest. The keeper's house has square headed sash windows, though these have been replaced in uPVC on the domestic building while the lighthouse retains its own sash arrangement. The entrance door is tongue and grooved timber, square headed, with a plain overlight above it and a semi-circular granite doorstep worn into shape at the threshold, a small and practical detail that nonetheless survives from the building's working life. Taken together, the tower and its attached house form a compact record of harbour architecture across the nineteenth century, functional rather than decorative, built to withstand salt air and repeated use rather than to impress.