Holywood Bank aka Belfast Lough (Lost lighthouse)

It seems to me odd that after 300+ posts, this is my first post about a Belfast lighthouse. One of Ireland's major ports, at one time it seemed it had so many lighthouses that boats entering the harbour found it hard avoiding them. (I'm exaggerating of course but at least three met their ends at the hands of moving objects!) The history of these lights is something I have been trying to unravel and a tortuous exercise it is too as there is a lot of contradictory evidence around. But for this post I will confine myself to the outermost of the Belfast lights. 

Nowadays, there are no lighthouses at Belfast, as such. Plenty of lights and buoys and beacons but the lighthouses are all gone, unless you count the Great Optic on the Maritime Mile in the Titanic Quarter, which I do and which I have yet to visit.

The above lighthouse is the Holywood Bank Lighthouse (aka Belfast Lough lighthouse) (b.1844 d.1889) At least, I think it is. Every copy of this photo describes it as the Holywood Bank lighthouse built by Alexander Mitchell in 1844. But more of that later.

We have, of course, come across Mitchell before, the blind, Belfast engineer (born in South William Street in Dublin but the family moved to Belfast when young. I'm not trying to claim him for Dublin!!) Inspired by how easily a corkscrew went into a cork but could not be pulled out straight, he transferred the principal to the problem of building edifices on mud. The story goes that, in the 1830s, with his 19 year old son, John, he rowed out into Belfast Lough with a long pole attached to a metal screw. This he screwed into the mud, leaving the top of the pole exposed. He came back the following day to find the pole still in situ and the screwpile lighthouse was born.

Alexander Mitchell portrait (Dundalk pile light can be seen through the window behind)

Mitchell patented his invention. His first light was built on Maplin Sands off the Thames. The second was at the mouth of the Wyre off Fleetwood in Lancashire. (Fleetwood was finished before Maplin and was the first Mitchell lighthouse to be lit) Then he tried to build a light on the Kish sandbank off Dublin but that was one of his rare failures, not through any fault of the system but because a violent storm destroyed the structure before the screws were properly in place. His fourth lighthouse was the Holywood Bank lighthouse on the approaches to his beloved Belfast.

Mitchell's plan for the Belfast Lough light

'Mud, mud, glorious mud' goes the old song and there was certainly nothing quite like it for infuriating Belfast port engineers. The harbour was awash with it and nowhere more so than on the southern approaches to the harbour off the small town off Holywood, from where a large bank of mud stretches out from the shore and has been responsible for many wrecks. To warn ships and boats to keep to the north of this bank, Mitchell erected his lighthouse. It cost a mere £1,300, due mainly to Mitchell being very generous on his price, due to his love for his adopted city. It seems to have been well-received, particularly by one of the pilots, testifying in one of those never-ending tidal reports in 1846: - 

(and so he goes on. Harbour pilots were obviously the taxi-drivers of yesteryear, with their definite opinions on every subject!)

The Holywood Bank Lighthouse was very similar in design to the Fleetwood light, except that it had a slightly smaller lantern and a longer living quarters. The latter was because it doubled up as a pilot station, housing the pilots who would guide ships into the harbour. It stood in eight feet of water at a height of 29 feet above high water. It originally shone a static red light, visible for five miles though it later successfully operated as a guinea-pig for Lord Kelvin / Charles Babbage's intermittent white light (visible for 12 miles) which, from November, shone the letter U (dot, dot, dash) in the Morse alphabet, an innovation which was "exceedingly well-liked by the pilots and other practical men who have had experience of it" in the unbiased opinion of Lord Kelvin. 

In 1850, the wooden piles were found to be in a parlous state and were strengthened with iron.

Below is a eulogy from the Belfast Newsletter from 8th October 1844. The first half gives a resume of Alexander Mitchell's past achievements. This is the second half.

Oil on canvas painting 'The Holywood Lighthouse' by an unknown author of 'The Irish School,' currently displayed in the Belfast Harbour Commissioners Office. ArtUK lists the date of the painting as 1844. The Belfast Harbour Commissioners say 1860. I'd veer towards the latter.

There are a couple of things puzzle me about this picture. Firstly, the waves, the clouds and the boats all seem to be drawn meticulously and expertly, yet the subject of the picture, the lighthouse, seems to have been drawn by the artist's eight-year-old son. Secondly, what is that structure to the right of the lighthouse? Is it a bell-tower attached to the lighthouse or another free-standing structure? As far as I know, the next lighthouse, more than a mile away only went up in 1851, which would rule out the 1844 date, though the structure above doesn't seem a mile away. Thirdly, the lighthouse seems pretty useless as the boats are swarming all around it, disregarding the dangers it is supposed to be highlighting (though, of course, that may have been artistic licence - I doubt the artist sat in a boat drawing away in that choppy sea!) What is more noticeable is the fatness of the lighthouse (with extra living quarters) which makes me wonder if the extremely slender lighthouse in the picture at the top of the page is really the Holywood Bank Lighthouse and could maybe another of the pile lights that were built subsequently.

This is a bell that once was used as a fog-bell on the Holywood Bank lighthouse, now hanging in the Belfast Harbour Commissioners Office. However, that is just a tiny part of the bell's history and it deserves a post of its own.

In keeping with the questions raised over the Holywood Bank lighthouse, it's demise is also subject to debate. The Belfast Harbour Commissioners, in the commentary to the painting above says "...1860, 31 years before the lighthouse was demolished after it became obsolete when the Victoria Channel was extended through the Holywood Bank." This gives us a demolition date of 1891 and it was done voluntarily.

However, most other sources say that the lighthouse was destroyed by the Earl of Ulster on 12th March 1889. (When I first read that statement, the name of the ship was unitalicised and I had visions of some mad, rampaging member of the aristocracy taking an axe to it) The Earl of Ulster was a paddle-steamer that operated from Fleetwood to Belfast. A few years previous to this, she had a collision with a schooner off the Isle of Man, which emboldened her to do the Harbour Commissioners' work for them in 1889. She was owned by the London and North Western Railway company, built in 1874, broken up for scrap in 1895.

Strangely, I cannot find any newspaper reports of the collision, which there should have been, nor what became to the lighthouse keeper and his family and any pilots there at the time. (There are plenty of other graphic and sensational descriptions of the destruction by boats of other lighthouses in the harbour both before and after.) It falls to the London Gazette to report the matter in the form of a harbour lights notice, two weeks later: -

It should be noted that the Harbour Board had intended to move / demolish the lighthouse anyway to make way for the straightening of the channel and pier extensions that were underway at the time. The absence of newspaper reports of the collision may be construed by people of nasty, suspicious minds that the accident was a mere insurance scam but I couldn't possibly ascribe to that. More likely is that I am putting the wrong words into the search engine! 

Another 'Notice to Mariners' in July 1891, on the completion of the harbour works, notes that "the temporary lighting arrangements which mark the site of the Holywood Lighthouse ... will be removed."

Thus, the story of the historic Holywood Bank Lighthouse comes to a conclusion. Any errors noticed or corrections needing to be made or additional information would be gratefully received at gouldingpeter@gmail.com