Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Model of Whitecastle pile light by Ken Doherty, built from a 1927 photograph, currently on display at the Inishowen Maritime Museum in Greencastle The lights of Lough Foyle have baffled me now for many a day, mainly because many of them are gone and there is very little in the archives about them. So, with a lot of help from local residents, Seamus Bovaird and Martin Doherty, I have tried to piece them together and record what little I know of them. In general, Lough Foyle is a large expanse of water, where the River Foyle, after flowing through the city of Derry (I use the term merely because it is shorter) and its outskirts, suddenly widens out as it nears the sea. Donegal is on the west side, co. Derry is on the east side. After partition, nobody thought to decide who had jurisdiction over what but now the Lough is jointly administered. The main channel for vessels ran along the Donegal coast and lights were erected by the Derry Harbour Board to warn ships from straying too close to...

  The remarkable sketch above is a detail of a drawing in the National Library of Ireland. The title of the piece is "Beacon Towers Erected by the Reverend Charles Gayer 1847 (Entrance to Dingle Harbour)" and the National Library have somehow decided that the artist was Samuel Watson (1761-1802) who obviously dabbled in clairvoyance as well as art. To me, it has more than a hint of Terry Gilliam about it. I have written about these Dingle daymarks before ( here ) but in my naivety had thought they had only been three in number.  The tower on the top left hand side is atop Carhoo Hill and is known locally Eask Tower. It originally stood 27 feet tall and was solid in structure, with a hand pointing in the direction of the entrance to the harbour. At the turn of the twentieth century it was increased in height to 40 feet and given a new hand. It is the only one that is relatively intact. Eask Tower (the Dalek) The tower on the right hand side of the sketch is on top of Beenbawn ...

A month or two ago, I posted about a lighthouse that had been erected on the pier at Newcastle county Down. The evidence I had was sketchy. A lighthouse showed at the end of the pier on the Ordnance Survey 2nd series map. An 1861 report mentioned that a 'small lighthouse' had been erected in Newcastle in 1849. In 1869, a violent storm washed away the south pier. Later estimates for its repair included £10 for a cast-iron lighthouse. From all of this, I surmised that the original 1849 lighthouse had been washed away in 1869 and that it had been comparatively small and cast-iron, probably like the one that had stood at Bray, I said at the time. Well, I scoured the net trying to find an old photograph of this light, to no avail. I concluded that there was no further point searching. If such a photo, or sketch, or painting existed, it would fall into my lap, rather than me finding it. Only now it appears that I had a photo of the lost lighthouse all along. And, what's more, I ...

  When I was a child, my parents often had trouble with the neighbours over one thing or another, no matter where we lived. Now I'm an adult, I'm prepared to put up with a bit of inconvenience to avoid the nasty, obsessive feeling of being at loggerheads with 'them next door.' Even if you don't see your neighbours from one end of the year to the next, its a very underrated feeling to have no issues with twitching curtains. Not so these two boyos, as reported to the Cork Southern Reporter , back in early 1843. Intolerance and Bigotry even at a Lighthouse There is a Lighthouse on the Southern Coast of Ireland, not five miles from Cape Clear, on which two Lightkeepers reside with their families in different habitations, the one a Protestant and the other a Roman Catholic. The Protestant is principal light man, was a Lieutenant of Marines, and is this long time retired from the service on her Majesty’s half pay. This sprig of the  Reformation  is in the habit of being v...

 A few months ago, I did a piece on an interesting concrete block called Gunnaway Rock off the coast at Warrenpoint in Carlingford Lough. (And yes, I'm aware that the juxtaposition of the words 'interesting' and 'concrete block'  will jar to many people's ears!) Black Rock, off the coast of Omeath on the other side of the Lough, was a sister of the Gunnaway Rock. It lay roughly 300 yards off the coastline at the end of the coastal shoals. Being submerged at high tide, it was particularly dangerous. A perch was placed on the rock in the middle of the nineteenth century, which was found by an 1864 Irish Lights local harbour report to be totally insufficient and barely visible in clear weather. The lough landlord, Lord Clermont, was unimpressed with their findings. Turn of the century showing the shoals stretching out from Omeath and culminating with the Black Rock beacon . Below, practically the same photograph at high tide. Wrecks, frankly, were bound to occur, ...

  This little beauty of a light has adorned the quayside at Bullock Harbour in Dalkey since 2017. I say 'Bullock Harbour' but some call it 'Bulloch.' To paraphrase Woody Allen, if the two factions ever met, a very dull argument would ensue. Fishermen have plied their trade from this tiny south county Dublin harbour for centuries. The Cistercian monks were granted the rights to the fisheries here in the twelfth century and built a castle to protect their assets. The enclosed community of fishermen were thus safe from the marauding hordes of Wicklowmen but not from the outstretched hands of the monks, who demanded protection money. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the castle fell into private hands.  Sketch of Bullock Castle by Francis Place, 1699 A 'new' stone pier was erected here in 1770, implying that some sort of pier existed beforehand. The harbour became a base for pilot boats guiding ships into Dublin Port and also for the Revenue Commissioners. A...