Lady Isle beacon

Lady Isle Lighthouse was built in 1903 by the Northern Lighthouse Board to plans by David Alan Stevenson and Charles Stevenson. The lighthouse stands on a low island in the Firth of Clyde, on the site of an earlier beacon, and rises to a maximum height of 19 metres.

The tower is of an apparently unique design, comprising four adjoining concrete buttresses forming a cross shape in plan. A roughly circular concrete platform gallery, surrounded by a railing, sits on top of these buttresses and supports the lantern. The current lantern is made of glass-reinforced plastic and Perspex, matching the design of the original. An external spiral staircase, originally cast iron but replaced with galvanised mild steel during the solarisation of the lighthouse, is located within the north western angle of the cross-shaped plan.

The lighthouse was built to warn passing seafarers of Lady Isle itself and the rocky low-tide elevations of Half Tide Rock and Scart Rock to the northeast. It also aided navigation along the Firth of Clyde, into the harbours at Troon and Irvine, and into sheltered water for larger vessels to the east of the island.

Construction began in August 1902 and the light became operational on 27 January 1903. The Northern Lighthouse Board approved the construction following a petition by the Glasgow & South-Western Railway Company, owners of Troon harbour, and by masters of foreign and coastal ships. The lighthouse replaced an earlier stone beacon; a second beacon of the pair built by Glasgow in 1776 still stands around 75 metres east of the lighthouse, and the alignment between these two structures provides the same navigational aid that the original pair did.

The original light was gas powered and was converted to run on acetylene around 1943, with an external cylindrical fuel storage tank positioned next to the base of the tower. The light was converted to electricity provided by solar power in 2005 to 2006. During this solarisation, the cast iron stairs and balcony railing were replaced by galvanised mild steel examples, the lantern was replaced with the current glass-reinforced plastic and Perspex version, and the fuel storage tank was removed. The lighthouse remains operational as an automated light.