Survey Data
Reg No
31304102
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
Lighthouse keeper's house
Date
1855 - 1865
Coordinates
51502, 309102
Date Recorded
30/07/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Pair of semi-detached three-bay single-storey lighthouse keepers' houses with half-dormer attics, built 1860; occupied 1901, on symmetrical plans. Vacated, 1974. Dismantled, 1987. "Restored", 1998, to accommodate occasional use. Replacement pitched artificial slate roofs with clay ridge tiles, chimney stacks now missing, concrete coping to gables, and cast-iron rainwater goods on cut-granite beaded corbels. Tuck pointed granite ashlar walls on cut-granite chamfered plinths. Camber- or segmental-headed central door openings with cut-granite step thresholds, and cut-granite surrounds having chamfered reveals framing timber boarded or tongue-and-groove timber panelled doors having overlights. Square-headed flanking window openings with cut-granite sills, and cut-granite surrounds having chamfered reveals framing replacement uPVC casement windows replacing six-over-six timber sash windows. Set in shared grounds on outcrop.
Appraisal
A pair of lighthouse keepers' houses erected to an undated design signed by George Halpin Junior (1804-69), Inspector of Works and Lighthouses for the Ballast Board (appointed 1854; resigned 1862; CIL), representing an integral component of the mid nineteenth-century built heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of each unit confirmed by such attributes as the compact rectilinear plan form centred on a restrained doorcase; the construction in a "sparrow pecked" granite offset by sheer dressings demonstrating good quality workmanship; and the monolithic stone work embellishing the roofline. Having been successfully "restored" following a prolonged period of unoccupancy, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with quantities of the original fabric, thereby upholding much of the character or integrity of a pair of lighthouse keepers’ houses forming part of a neat self-contained group alongside the adjacent Black Rock Lighthouse (see 31304101) with the resulting ensemble making a picturesque visual statement on an outcrop in the Atlantic Ocean.