Headland · Co. Cork
Ireland’s traditionally most southerly headland — a cliff-top signal station reached by a 52-metre bridge over a rock cleft, and the southern terminus of the Wild Atlantic Way, 26 km west of Schull.
Mizen Head sits at the end of the Mizen Peninsula in the Carbery district of County Cork, and it is traditionally regarded as the most southerly point of mainland Ireland, although Brow Head, further east, is the actual southernmost point. Its Irish name is Carn Uí Néid. The headland is the southern terminus of the Wild Atlantic Way and one of the route’s fifteen signature discovery points, and on a clear day the light on Fastnet Rock, more than eighty kilometres to the south, can be seen from the cliff top.
The buildings most visitors come for are not on the headland itself but on Cloghane Island, at the very end of the peninsula, reached by a 52-metre arched bridge spanning a deep rock cleft. The first bridge was commissioned in 1907 and the present ferro-concrete arch was built 1908–10. The island station was established on 3 May 1909 as a fog signal station, after the wreck of the SS Trada in December 1908 and the enquiry that followed, which blamed the lack of a signal. What many assume is a Victorian lighthouse is a twentieth-century one: the light was first shown on 1 October 1959, and the station was automated with its keepers withdrawn in March 1993. The site holds another first: the first wireless beacon on the Irish coast was installed across the gorge in 1931.
The site is private property and is locked when closed. It is operated by the Mizen Tourism Co-operative Society, with a visitor centre, café and shop at the car park and an eCentre in Goleen village. Opening hours for the 2026 season are daily 10:30–5:00, and there is a charge for the crossing (adults €7.50, senior/student €5, child €3.50, family €25 as last published). Dogs are welcome on a lead. Allow about two hours.
Where to stay
The peninsula is remote enough to feel like the end of the country — the right base is the one within the hour.
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