Black Head

The headland

Black Head is the north-western tip of County Clare, lying to the northwest of Gleninagh Mountain, 318.5 metres high, and it forms the turning point where the southern shore of Galway Bay changes from running east-west to running north-south. The headland looks out over Kilrush Bay and the entrance to the great bay, and the drive to it — the coast road from the west Clare villages — is as good as the stop. The country here is the Burren in its proper form: the carboniferous limestone, the terraced hills, the small settlements in the hollows, and the sea at the end of it.

The lighthouse

The lighthouse on the headland is the small, late one — built in 1935 and first established on 21 February 1936, a late arrival among the Irish lights. The story is a good one: the trans-Atlantic liners that called at Galway in the 1930s used to anchor off Ballyvaghan, east of Black Head, and their captains’ continual complaints — relayed in a Galway Harbour Commissioners’ letter of 18 September 1934 — are what got the light built. The 4-metre-square by 5.1-metre-high concrete tower was built by Robert MacDonald of Galway, with the fourth-order optic from Chance Brothers of Birmingham, and a red sector added in 1935 to cover Loo Rock and define the anchorage. The land was a thirty-foot strip from the roadway to the sea, bought from the Casey family of Morrough for five to seven pounds.

What to do

The headland is a stop, not a destination: the drive up the coast, the view over Kilrush Bay and into Galway Bay, the lighthouse at the end. Allow an hour for the stop, and pair it with the west Clare villages — Kilrush, the Burren, the coast road — for a full touring day.

Practical

The headland and the lighthouse country are the end of the coast road from Kilrush. The lighthouse is a small tower on open ground — the weather on the headland is the west Atlantic in its proper form, and the wind is the rule.