Whiteford Lighthouse

Whiteford Point Lighthouse is located off the coast at Whiteford Point near Whiteford Sands, on the Gower Peninsula, south Wales.

Description

It is an unusual cast-iron lighthouse built in 1865, 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 feet high and stands just above low-water level. The base is about 24 feet in diameter and rises gracefully to a diameter of 11 feet six inches at lantern level. Around the base of the Lighthouse lies a pitched stone apron.

Construction and maintenance

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 32mm thick, with an upstand flange on each side, and bolted with cast-iron bolts, each weighing 2 lbs. There are eight levels of panel tapering to the sixth 'course'. The first three horizontal joints are covered by iron bands supported on brackets and topped with fillets of concrete.

Throughout the 1870s vertical cracks developed in...
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