The North Mole Light… and more.

 

Amongst Gibraltar’s neglected monuments is a building that is truly iconic and yet has been largely ignored as a heritage asset. Officially designated ‘Gibraltar North Mole D Head Light', at the southern terminus of the Western Arm of North Mole, it is a truly remarkable building. As a piece of over-engineered, cast iron Victorian architecture it was designed to last; and it has… over 100 years to date and still going strong.    

 

                      

    North Mole D Head Light

 

 It was one half of a pair which graced the entrances to our harbour, but its partner at South Mole was consigned to the scrapheap around 30 years ago.

                                             

                                                                               South Mole A Head Light                   

       

When originally built in 1904, each of our towers was surmounted by a lantern house identical to this 1909 version at Dover’s Admiralty Pier which continues in service to this day.    

 

 

 

This picture from the web shows South Mole A complete with lantern house, viewed from detached mole across the First World War boom defences.

        

In both North Mole D and South Mole A, the original lantern houses were removed and replaced with square skeletal towers, with a second gallery and new lantern, in order to elevate the plane of the light.

                       

 

 This would not have surprised builder John Lysaght if he were around today. His entrepreneurial outlook depended on always looking for the next innovation. Starting in 1857 in a small Bristol workshop with six men and a boy galvanising buckets and ships’ ironwork, by 1860 he had moved onto supply of corrugated iron sheets for the prefabricated homes of pioneer émigrés to Africa and Australia. Lysaght eventually built a world wide business, including a factory in Australia, which is still a successful business today.

 

        

This full page advert from The Ironmonger of 1912, proudly boasts that Lysaght supplied all the iron and steel work for the New Harbour Works at Gibraltar, amounting to 12.000 tons. The very core of many of our original dockyard buildings, boathouses, stores and workshops, were supplied by him. So was - incidentally - much of the ironwork for the Algeciras (Gibraltar) Railway.

 

 

 Whilst we started looking at the North Mole light, it seems that John Lysaght was responsible for supplying the bones of many of the buildings we now consider to be of heritage value. 

Rather a pity then, that the North Mole light is now a pedestal for mobile phone antennae and not as highly valued as perhaps it might be.

 

 

    

                                                                         

                                                                                             Lysaght's ORB trademark.

* For those with a technical interest, the North Mole Light is an active aid to navigation, operated by the GPA. The tower has a height of 56 feet (17mtrs) and the light has a focal plane of 59 feet (18mtrs). The characteristic is quick-flashing red, with a range of 5 nautical miles.

 

First published here in February 2025.                                      Paul Hodkinson.