Ballynacourty Point Lighthouse, Ballynacourty, Co. Waterford

The cast iron railings that ring the lantern gallery add to that impression, a streamlined band of ironwork wrapped around the top of the tower that catches the light and gives the structure a slightly nautical, almost mechanical elegance uncommon in stone buildings of this period.

The tower was built in 1858 to a design by George Halpin Junior, who served as Inspector of Works and Lighthouses for the Ballast Board, the body then responsible for navigation aids around the Irish coast, from his appointment in 1854 until his resignation in 1862. Halpin's design here shares a family resemblance with his Black Rock Lighthouse in County Mayo, built between 1858 and 1862, and the two structures can be read as companion works from the same short but productive period of his career. Ballynacourty Point is a freestanding, single-bay tower of two stages raised on a circular plan, its battered walls, meaning they lean inward slightly as they climb, built of limewashed granite ashlar finished with tuck pointing, a technique of ruled false joints designed to give coursed stone a crisper, more regular appearance. The base is set on a chamfered granite plinth, and the door and window openings are framed in a bas-relief block-and-start surround, an alternating pattern of projecting and recessed stone blocks that gives the plain granite a bit of visual rhythm. Inside, a cut-granite spiral staircase with wrought iron balusters and banister still climbs the full height of the tower, a piece of engineering as considered as the exterior.

Set on its headland, the lighthouse's cantilevered walkway, carried on corbels with a curved cavetto profile, along with its eight-over-eight timber sash windows, remain intact and give a good sense of how thoroughly Halpin thought through both the practical and decorative aspects of the design. As a piece of mid-nineteenth-century maritime infrastructure for County Waterford, it stands somewhat apart from the more austere lighthouse towers of the period, its architectural ambition visible in details that a purely functional structure would not have needed.