page_title: Whiteford Lighthouse
section_title: Historical significance
hierarchical_section_title: Whiteford Lighthouse / Historical significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Whiteford Lighthouse, located near Whiteford Sands, southern Wales
context_page_description: Whiteford Point Lighthouse is located off the coast at Whiteford Point near Whiteford Sands, on the Gower Peninsula, south Wales.
context_section_description: The first known cast-iron British lighthouse was at Swansea Harbour and was built in 1803. The architect was 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 tower in 1904.
  In the middle of the nineteenth century, the engineer Alexander Gordon designed a number of fine cast-iron towers for colonial waters. These were cast at Pimlico and shipped out to be erected by comparatively unskilled labour. Some still survive in Jamaica and Bermuda, and a cast-iron tower at Tiri-tiri, New Zealand, built in 1920, is one of the last in this material.
  Whiteford Lighthouse is the only cast-iron lighthouse in Britain which is wave-washed, although it can be reached on foot at low tide. The handful of other surviving lighthouses of this type stand well clear of the water on either harbour piers or reefs.
  Whitford Lighthouse is listed by Cadw as Grade II* as a rare survival of a wave-swept cast-iron lighthouse in British coastal waters, and an important work of cast-iron architecture and nineteenth-century lighthouse design and construction. It is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
caption: Whiteford Lighthouse, located near Whiteford Sands
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