Most landlocked lighthouse

The lighthouse positioned farthest from a body of water is the Bidston Lighthouse, located atop Bidston Hill on the Wirral Peninsula in Merseyside, UK. During the time it was active, the nearest high-water mark was 3.9 km (2.4 miles) away near Leasowe. (Erosion and dredging have since brought the high water mark to within 2.9 km (1.8 miles) of the lighthouse). The first lighthouse was built on this location in 1771. It was rebuilt in 1873 and continued to be used until 1913.

There are many other active or formerly active lighthouses that are located a greater distance from the sea, but these are all navigation lights for inland waterways such as lakes or rivers. These other lights are located closer to the body of water they light than Bidston is to the sea.

There are also some other inland lighthouses that are either decorative or serve a purpose other than marine navigation (i.e. airway beacons), but these do not count for the purposes of this record.

The Bidston Lighthouse's unusual location was chosen because it was designed to work as part of a pair of lights (the other was located on the shore in Leasowe). Navigators heading for the docks at Liverpool could use the alignment of the upper and lower lights to gauge their ship's position in relation to the sandbars and obstacles around the mouth of the Mersey River. The light was decommissioned after shifts in the position of the sandbars made the beacons useless as a point of reference.