St Mary's Lighthouse
St Mary's Lighthouse stands on a small tidal island at Whitley Bay on the Northumberland coast, connected to the mainland by a concrete causeway that is submerged at high tide and accessible for only a few hours around low water. The lighthouse, built in 1898 and decommissioned in 1984, is one of the most photogenic and accessible lighthouses in northeastern England, its white-painted tower and keeper's cottages reflected in the tidal pools around the island's base and backed by the grey North Sea. The lighthouse replaced an older coal-burning beacon that had warned ships of the rocky coastline here since the seventeenth century. The current structure is a conventional British lighthouse design of the late Victorian period, built in Northumberland limestone with a tower rising 36 metres from the rock to the light. Trinity House operated the lighthouse until its decommissioning, when North Tyneside Council took over the site and converted it into a visitor attraction while preserving the lighthouse buildings and their interpretation value. The island and its surrounding area function as a Local Nature Reserve, the tidal pools around the causeway supporting interesting marine life including anemones, crabs and various seaweed species exposed at low tide. The grassland on the island is managed for wildflowers and provides nesting habitat for a variety of coastal birds. From the island's outer rocks, views extend north along the Northumberland coast toward Coquet Island and south toward Tynemouth and the Tyne estuary. Visitors can climb the lighthouse tower, which provides panoramic views along this flat coastal section that are otherwise difficult to obtain, and explore the interpretive displays in the keeper's cottages about the history of lighthouse operation and the specific history of St Mary's. The causeway crossing, which gives the visit a pleasantly adventurous character, must be timed carefully according to the tide tables posted at the mainland end. The surrounding coast north of Whitley Bay provides pleasant walking along Northumberland's sandy beaches, and the area is also home to a strong population of grey seals that haul out on rocky islets and can frequently be seen from the shore.