Straw Island Lighthouse, Oileán na Tuí [Straw Island], Co. Galway

The lighthouse on Oileán an Tuí, Straw Island, does something different. It is squat, almost stubby by comparison with its mainland cousins, a round tower with slightly flared sides that seems to hunker down against the Atlantic weather rather than rise above it. That low, thickset profile is unusual enough in the region to be worth noting on its own, but it is the colour scheme that catches the eye first: white rendered walls set against red painted metalwork, a combination plain enough in description but genuinely striking against the grey of sea and sky.

The lighthouse was erected in 1878 to guard the approach to the harbour at Cill Rónáin, the main settlement on Inishmore and the principal landing point for the Aran Islands. Its lantern, round in plan and topped with a conical metal roof and finial, houses an apparatus dating to 1926, meaning the light itself was updated well into the twentieth century even though the tower beneath it is a Victorian structure. A cast-metal railing runs around the walkway that encircles the lantern, the kind of practical ironwork found on lighthouses generally, allowing keepers access for maintenance and inspection. At the base, a low multiple-bay building with pitched slate roofs and concrete copings is built directly against the tower, and the whole complex sits inside a polygonal compound enclosed by rendered walls. A smaller lean-to outbuilding stands at the south end of that compound, its walls rendered to match and its roof a simple lean-to slate structure, clearly a support building rather than anything designed to draw attention.

Together, the tower, the keeper's quarters, the enclosing walls and the outbuilding form a complete small-scale station, compact enough that its entire footprint sits within the confines of a small island. That compactness is itself part of what makes it unusual: rather than a single tall tower isolated on rock, this is a working complex where every element, from the flared base of the lighthouse to the humble lean-to at the compound's edge, was built with a specific function in mind, and where the aesthetic effect people notice today, that contrast of white render and red metal, was really just the practical choice of paint and finish for a working light on a low, exposed island at the mouth of Cill Rónáin harbour.