Whiteford Lighthouse

The first known cast-iron British lighthouse was at Swansea Harbour and was built in 1803. The architect was William Jernegan, and the plates were cast at the Neath Abbey Ironworks. Cast iron was also used for Maryport Lighthouse, Cumberland, in 1834. In 1836, the lighthouse at the Town Pier, Gravesend, Kent, was built from cast iron. In 1842, two cast-iron leading lights were erected at Aberdeen, with elegant tapering octagonal towers and a smooth external face. At Sunderland, another well-known example was built on the pier head in 1856. The first 'solid' rock or wave-washed cast-iron tower was erected on the exposed Fastnet Rock in 1854, but this cracked and was replaced by a masonry…

The lighthouse sits on 88 wooden piles driven into glacial moraine. These are linked horizontally by walling pieces, using 500 cast-iron plants and bolts. These would have formed a box, probably square or octagonal, which would have been excavated and partially filled with concrete. The materials were delivered by boat and work undertaken during low tide. The structure of the shell is formed from 105 bent and tapered cast-iron plates, each about 32 mm thick, with an upstand flange on each side, and bolted with cast-iron bolts, each weighing 2 lb. There are eight levels of panel tapering to the sixth 'course'. The first three horizontal joints are covered by iron bands supported on brackets…

It is an unusual cast-iron lighthouse built in 1865 to a design by John Bowen (1825–1873) of Llanelli, by the Llanelli Harbour and Burry Navigation Commissioners to mark the shoals of Whiteford Point, replacing an earlier piled structure of 1854, of which nothing remains. It is the only wave-swept cast-iron tower of this size in Britain. The tower is 44 ft high and stands just above low-water level. The base is about 24 ft in diameter and rises to a diameter of 11 ft at lantern level. A pitched stone apron surrounds the base of the lighthouse.