Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Alexander Mitchell's pile light off the coast of Fleetwood in Lancashire. Constructed in 1840, it is probably similar in design to Mitchell's nearly-completed lighthouse on the Kish Bank in Dublin This is the second installment of a three-part mini-series about Irish wannabe lighthouses which will be shown on Netflix starring Frances McDormand and that guy from Peaky Blinders. Basically, a wannabe lighthouse is one where construction began but it never got to live the dream of sweeping its beam across the perilous sea. Alexander Mitchell was a Dublin-born, Belfast-reared engineer who went blind at the age of 21. Undaunted, he carried on a brickmaking and building enterprise for 30 years until he retired to concentrate on his screw-pile method of construction, which he had patented. Basically, this consisted of screwing poles or piles into soft ground like a corkscrew and which, like a corkscrew, would not pull out straight. Thus he was able to construct lighthouses and piers at...

The one that got away. Capel Island lighthouse today Some lighthouses around Ireland's coastline are currently in use; some are defunct but still standing; and some are lost and gone forever. There is a further category - the wannabe lighthouse - structures that were started but for one reason or another (mainly 'sod this for a game of lightkeepers' ) were never completed and from whom a beam never issued forth. Their number is few - I can only think of three - but, in my mind's ear, I hear them sobbing that, only for hard luck, they could have played at county level. First up, and the one that got the nearest to completion was Capel Island near the entrance to Youghal harbour, also called Cable Island at the time. Position of Capel Island, in between Youghal (top right) and Ballycotton (bottom middle) A glance at the 1828 lighthouse map of the south coast of Ireland (below) shows a long length of dark coastline between the Old Head of Kinsale and Hook Head, lit only by...

  The Culmore light with the remains of the fort behind. It has its name written on it in case it ever gets lost Culmore lighthouse is situated on the west bank of the River Foyle, about four miles north of Derry, where the river starts to widen out into the Foyle estuary. It is also slightly south of the North of Ireland border with the Republic, though all lights on both the river and the estuary come under the jurisdiction of the (London) Derry Harbour Board. Location of Culmore Point marked with a very amateurish red cross There was a fort at Culmore since the early 1600s and its position on the river would have made an ideal spot to place a lighthouse. Sadly, I have been unable to unearth any evidence that a guiding light ever shone forth there prior to 1848.   In the 1840s, the newly-founded Harbour Board set about a programme of dredging and lighting to make the port of Derry accessible to ships at night. Pile lights were erected along the length of the estuary and beac...

  The old 1818 Cape Clear lighthouse beside the slightly older signal tower on the top of the island When we last met Robert Wilson , he had incurred the displeasure of the Protestant Archbishop Trench, for starting to build a catholic chapel on the island of Inis Mor on the Aran Islands with money raised by the Archbishop himself and, for his sins, he was banished to the lighthouse on Arranmore Island county Donegal. He and wife Ann had had four children born on Inis Mor (Robert, 1816; Ann 1817; Elizabeth 1820; and Mary 1822) and a fifth child, John, was born on Arranmore, or Arran North, as it was sometimes called, in 1826. Robert's third and final station - also an inhabited offshore station - was at Cape Clear, the light which preceded the Fastnet, off the coast of county Cork. Four more children were born here - Louisa 1828, William 1831, George 1832 and Frederick 1835 - making nine in total, which wasn't bad for a Protestant. In March 1835, a very interesting piece appear...

  The space age lighthouse at Ferris Point dualled as the Harbour Office when it was first unveiled in 1976. Sadly its use as a navigational light lasted less than 20 years. In a recent post on the lighthouse at Ferris Point, I described how the old Ferris Point lighthouse lantern, dating from 1839, was moved up the coast to Carnlough to serve as as a tourist attraction in the harbour there and I wondered aloud if it was still there, as it was not mentioned as an attraction on any of the local tourist sites. Well, thanks to the much-travelled Finola Finlay of the Roaringwater Journal and local man Frank Rogers, the answer is in and its very disappointing. Initial enquiries seemed to suggest the lantern was still in situ but, on trying to get a photograph of it, it was discovered that it wasn't. Further enquiries elicited the information that the copper dome of the lantern had been stolen by thieves, presumably for melting down and selling on. Because of this, the lantern had been...