Marking the mouth of the Foyle
Stroove Lighthouse stands at Dunagree Point, the low headland just under Inishowen Head where the open Atlantic funnels into Lough Foyle. It was built to keep ships off the Tuns Bank, a shifting sandbank that lies across the approach to the lough off Magilligan Point on the Derry shore. The first lights showed on 1 December 1837. The station answers to a confusing number of names – Stroove, Shroove, Shrove, Dunagree, or simply Inishowen Lighthouse on Irish Lights charts – but they all point to the same white tower above the same small beach.
The lighthouse
George Halpin, the engineer behind most of Ireland’s nineteenth-century lights, drew up the design; the Dublin builder James Pettigrew won the contract in 1835 for £368. What went up was not one tower but two – a pair of cut-stone leading lights set about 140m apart, painted white, their fixed lights some 20m above high water. The main tower was later raised with a cast-iron upper section, added around 1870. After that the technology kept changing: a fog siren in 1900, a diaphone fog signal in 1942, full automation in 1979. The Commissioners of Irish Lights still run it, and the light is still lit.
One thing to be clear about. This is a working aid to navigation, not a visitor attraction. The tower is not open, and the former keepers’ houses beside it are private. You look at Stroove Lighthouse; you don’t go in. That is the honest limit of the place – the setting does the rest.
The beach
Below the lighthouse, Stroove Beach (Shroove on some signs) is a short curve of pale sand that holds a Blue Flag for water quality. It shelves gently, the swimming is usually safe, and lifeguards patrol in the summer months. There are picnic tables near the point, set so the tower sits in the frame while you eat. It is a quieter beach than Culdaff over on the north coast of the peninsula, and parking is limited to a small area by the shore.
The walk to Inishowen Head
The lighthouse is the usual start of the Inishowen Head loop. Inishowen Head itself is only about 400m north, up a rough track, and from the top the view opens right out – the Atlantic to the north, the long pale line of Magilligan Strand across the lough, and the Antrim coast beyond it. On a clear day you can pick out the hills behind the north Antrim shore. The full loop climbs behind the head and drops back down. Wear proper boots; the higher ground is often wet.
Getting there and nearby
Stroove is signposted from Greencastle, about 5km back down the coast, and the last stretch is a narrow road that ends at the shore. Greencastle itself has the fishing harbour, a maritime museum, and the ruin of Greencastle Castle standing above the water. The lighthouse also sits near the eastern end of the Inishowen 100, the signposted loop drive around the peninsula.
Come at the end of the day. The tower faces east across the Foyle, so the morning sun hits it head-on, but it is the evening – when the light drops behind the Inishowen hills and the lighthouse goes to silhouette above the sand – that is worth the drive out.