Viewing platform at Youghal's lighthouse to be opened next month

A five-year wait is set to conclude in Youghal next month when a €325,000 viewing platform is unveiled at the town’s lighthouse site.

Encased in scaffolding, the 15m-high lighthouse is undergoing scrubbing and painting as the town’s latest visitor inducement comes to fruition.

Workers have now removed a disused plant storage room adjacent to the lighthouse, and poured base concrete onto the void in advance of constructing the viewing facility.

The platform will be installed on the lighthouse’s eastern facade, overlooking a rocky cove. The platform, which will be reached by a new entrance from Lighthouse Rd, will be wheelchair accessible and feature a “corrugated” glass structure.

Its “straight line” shape is intended as a “new intervention” to the lighthouse’s circular form and also in respect of it.

A hand-railed balustrade on the platform’s northern side will ensure privacy for the neighbouring former lighthouse keeper’s cottage.

Franciscan nunnery

The site housed a Franciscan nunnery in the 13th century, whereby nuns managed a “light tower” built by Maurice Fitzgerald in 1190.

That service ceased in 1542, and darkness reigned until the present lighthouse was built in 1848 — when Youghal was a busy trading port.

Cork County Council assumed ownership of the listed building in 2014, and the granite structure continues to flash its warning today.

The installation forms part of a scheme to connect beachside attractions like the boardwalk and greenway with the town centre, through visitor attractions, traffic management, and cycle lanes.

The plans also include reconstructing two nearby derelict viewing balconies, one of which relates to the legendary lovelorn Moll Goggin.

Legend records Moll Goggin was a broken-hearted young woman, who would stand forlorn at the spot leading to the town’s front strand, in an ultimately doomed wait for the return of her sailor lover.