Skerries Lighthouse with associated buildings and enclosure walls

Skerries Lighthouse with associated buildings and enclosure walls

The Keepers' Accommodation was built around 1851 as two symmetrically planned houses, which have since been amalgamated into a single dwelling and are no longer occupied by Trinity House. The building is constructed from whitewashed rough rubble on a rusticated battered plinth, with rusticated quoins and an ashlar parapet topped with a brick blocking course. It is 2 storeys high and presents a 3-window range to the east elevation, with a central entrance providing access to a stairway that leads to the lighthouse. A projecting flat-roofed porch with a moulded cornice and a canted upper storey set back dominates the entrance. Doorways flanking the porch have 2-centred chamfered arches with Trinity House arms in relief above them, while 2-light mullioned and transomed windows stand on either side of the porch at ground level, with 2-light mullioned windows on the first floor and in the upper storey of the porch. The two former dwellings are accessed from return elevations on the side elevations. The south elevation features a central doorway with 2-light mullioned and transomed windows flanking it and 2-light mullioned windows above, with basement windows below ground level. The north elevation is similarly arranged but with the central entrance at basement level.

The Keepers' accommodation stands within a curved enclosure bounded by low rendered rough rubble walls with cobbled surfaces. Small enclosed cobbled yards, accessed up steps either side of the building, contain small octagonal turrets with chamfered arched doors set into the walls at the angles; these originally housed privies. Behind these yards, the enclosure walls are stepped up to a battered plinth at the base of the lighthouse tower itself. The buildings are constructed against a sloping rock face. The central stairway providing access to the lighthouse rises in three straight flights, interrupted midway by a chamfered 4-centred archway sprung from corbels.

Walker's tower is encased by a concentric range of buildings, most of which appear to be later additions. The former engine house follows a standard late 19th-century Trinity House pattern, being circular with recessed mullioned and transomed windows with raked back upper lights, a moulded cornice and blocking course. It has been converted to Keepers' accommodation. The square tower of the fog station adjoins this building to the north; this was probably originally the lobby of the engine house, raised in height when converted to a fog station. The original circular lobby at the head of the stairs from the main entrance of the former accommodation block features a 2-centred arched doorway with Trinity House arms above it on its north elevation.

The lighthouse tower is a tapering circular structure 22 metres high, built on a tooled plinth in ashlar with a tooled cornice marking a second stage. It is painted in broad red and white bands. The upper stage has deeply recessed windows in lugged architraves. A solid stone crenellated parapet corbelled out on moulded brackets crowns the tower, supporting a cast-iron lantern continuously glazed with horizontal grid glazing bars.

The two keepers' dwellings, now amalgamated and linked at basement level, are accessed from the central entrance, which opens onto a grand staircase leading directly to the lighthouse. Each dwelling comprises two rooms on each floor, with rear wall fireplaces in the rear rooms and corner fireplaces to the front rooms. The lighthouse tower contains ground and first-floor store rooms with stone slab ceilings, followed by an open stone stairway with a plain cast-iron rail. An upper stage service room houses a cast-iron tube, formerly containing weights for the clockwork rotary mechanism of the light, with a ladder stair beyond leading to the lantern. The optic appears to date from around 1870 and consists of a cast-iron base with cylindrical shafts bearing moulded capitals and brackets that carry a 6-sided catadioptric lens rotating on a bath of mercury.

A sector-light tower to the southwest is lined with render over stone, forming a battered circular tower with a lattice-glazed cast-iron lantern and a cast-iron rail to its gridded platform.