The current 19th-century tower is the most recent in a series of lighthouses that have been built in the islands, which have helped to guide shipping around the archipelago and into Belfast Lough.

In 2015, the Commissioners of Irish Lights, who operate the lighthouse, replaced the hyperradiant Fresnel lens optic with a flashing LED system that uses only solar power.

[5] The tower was improved in 1796 with the addition of a glazed lantern room, with the light coming from "six Argand (circular wick) lamps burning sperm oil.

Evidence collected by the Royal Commission on Lights, Buoys, and Beacons in 1861, showed that the existing lighthouse needed to be replaced by one at a lower level on the outer Mew Island.

[8] In 1875 the Belfast Harbour Commissioners asked that the Copeland light be shifted to Mew Island, with the need for a new lighthouse being endorsed by the Board of Trade in 1881.

One of the key aspects of the design was to improve on the earlier oil powered light with its simple reflectors, by using gas burners in conjunction with a rotating glass Fresnel lens.

After restoration at the Commissioners of Irish Lights workshop in Dún Laoghaire, it was shipped back by Granuaile to Belfast to be put on display in "a new interpretive structure, made to resemble a lighthouse lantern room"[3] on the waterside walkway in the Titanic Quarter.

[1] The majority of the £447,000 cost of the new structure was met by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, with other contributions from Belfast City Council and Ulster villages.

[12] A temporary light was displayed until 2015, when a solar powered LED system was commissioned that uses flashing illuminants to mimic the characteristic of the rotating lens.

[17] Foggy conditions make the islands especially hazardous; a fog bell at the Copeland lighthouse was added in 1851 after three steam ships had run aground.

The listing states that the lighthouse "is a testament to the ambition of the Commissioners of Irish Lights and the skills of the nineteenth century engineers and workmen who built it.