Hook Lighthouse

One of the oldest lighthouses in the world and the second oldest still working, after the Tower of Hercules in Spain. The present tower has stood over 800 years. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, built the thirty-six-metre tower to mark the entrance to Waterford Harbour, because he had founded a port at New Ross some thirty kilometres upriver and needed ships to reach it safely. Tradition puts a beacon here as early as the fifth century, kept by the missionary Dubhán, whose name the headland carries; the similar-sounding duán means a fish hook.