It is not marked, not signposted, and its exact location is officially unknown. The structure above ground is long gone, but the foundations remain, absorbed quietly into a domestic plot overlooking one of the busiest approaches to Dublin Bay.

The lighthouse was built in 1665 by Sir Robert Reading, and by 1685 it was already being noted in the historical record by De Courcy as an established feature of the headland. It is thought to have replaced an earlier beacon, the kind of simple fire or lantern arrangement that preceded purpose-built lighthouse towers on Irish coasts. The transition from open beacon to enclosed lighthouse was gradual across this period, and Reading's structure on Howth Head was part of that broader shift in how the Irish coastline was being managed for maritime traffic. The landmark was significant enough to be recorded again in 1765 by the cartographers Scalé and Richards, suggesting it remained a known reference point on the headland for at least a century after its construction. What happened to the tower above ground, and when it fell out of use or was demolished, is not recorded in the available sources.

The site is not one that announces itself. The old Bailey cottage sits near the Bailey Lighthouse on the eastern tip of Howth Head, and the buried base lies somewhere in the garden ground behind it. Access to private gardens is obviously not assumed, and the monument record compiled by Geraldine Stout notes plainly that the exact location remains unknown. For anyone with a particular interest in early Irish lighthouse history, the area repays a walk regardless, since the landscape itself carries the logic of why a light was needed here at all, a dramatic headland jutting into the Irish Sea, with the shipping lanes into Dublin visible on all sides.