Eagle Island Lighthouse, Oileán sa Tuaidh [Eagle Island], Co. Mayo

Eagle Island Lighthouse forms one half of a pair, its twin standing nearby within the same shared grounds, enclosed by a limewashed battered boundary wall that curves around the outcrop like a low rampart. The arrangement of two towers on one small island is unusual enough to make a visitor pause, but it is the building itself, gently tapering from a broad granite base to a slender lantern gallery, that repays a closer look.

The tower was sanctioned in 1830, built by 1836, and recorded as extant by 1838, a fairly rapid sequence for a structure raised in such an exposed position. Its design is attributed on stylistic grounds to George Halpin Senior, who served as Inspector of Works and Lighthouses for the Ballast Board from 1810 and left his mark across the Irish coastline during this period; the tapering profile and the curvilinear ironwork encircling the lantern are treated as characteristic touches of his hand. The lighthouse did not have an easy history: it suffered damage in 1850, was "improved" in 1895, and underwent the twentieth-century modernisations common to Irish lighthouses generally, electrified in 1968 and automated in 1988, removing the need for a resident keeper. Structurally, it is a freestanding two-stage tower on a circular plan, its rendered battered walls rising from a chamfered granite plinth to a cantilevered walkway carried on granite corbels and fitted with cast-iron "Serpentine" railings around the lantern. The square-headed door and window openings keep their concealed dressings and granite sills, while inside, a cantilevered granite spiral staircase survives complete with wrought-iron balusters and a banister that terminates in a neat volute, a small flourish of craftsmanship tucked away where few would think to look for it.