St. Mary's Lighthouse

The first light in the area was in Tynemouth Priory - an 11th-century monastic chapel, whose monks maintained a lantern on the tower to warn passing ships of the danger of the rocks. A lighthouse was built on the site of the current Tynemouth Coastguard station in 1664 using stone from the priory. This lighthouse was demolished when the new lighthouse and adjacent keepers' cottages were built in 1898 on St Mary's Island by the John Miller company of Tynemouth, using 645 blocks of stone and 750,000 bricks. A first-order 'bi-valve' rotating optic was installed by Barbier & Bénard of Paris, very similar to the one they had provided the previous year for Lundy North Lighthouse; it displayed a…

Since 2012 St Mary's lighthouse has been grade II listed. While it no longer functions as a working lighthouse, it is easily accessible (when the tide is out) and regularly open to visitors; in addition to the lighthouse itself there is a small museum, a visitor's centre, and a café. The cottage was upgraded with a wood pellet boiler in 2014. In 2017 a renovation plan for the site (including roof-top viewing platforms and various glass-covered extensions) was rejected by the local planning authority due to environmental concerns. A new refurbishment proposal (to include rebuilding the original optic) was presented in 2018; however the Heritage Lottery Fund later turned down North Tyneside…