Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  The South Rock (Kilwarlin) lighthouse off the county Down coast. Photos of the light with lantern room intact are unfortunately rare I'm currently working on a book on selected 19th century lightkeepers. It's going quite slowly as other projects / work and family seem to be filling up a lot of my time. The archives at Irish Lights are still closed with little sign of anything coming online, as promised five years ago. Anyhow, this is the story of Walter Adamson, one of the early keepers on South Rock: - We do not know a lot about Walter Adamson, and what we do know is mired in a lot of conjecture. Like Michael Wishart, he was a Scotsman, hailing from the coastal town of Kircaldy in Fife. Family history researchers seem to have leant en masse to the not unreasonable deduction that he married one Mary Lawson in Ceres a few miles further north in 1792, mainly because there is a marriage register entry to that effect at the latter place. However, this ignores the fact that in 186...

  Duncannon Fort light from the wonderful beach below Following on from the previous post about the lighthouses at Duncannon, it is important not to forget that the people who manned the lights are every inch as important as the towers of brick and concrete themselves. Irish Lights did not keep regular lists of keepers at stations prior to 1919, so any further information / corrections are very welcome The Duncannon Fort light having been established in 1791 and probably even earlier, it naturally follows that it needed a keeper to take care of it. Unfortunately, none of the names of any of those early keepers, who came to light the light, have come to light. During a Trinity House inspection cruise in 1859, though, it was reported that the keeper at the Fort at the time succeeded his father in the job. This was probably George Brownell and his son, as Sarah Brownell, George’s daughter, married a soldier from the Fort in 1852. As the keeper at the Fort was not required during the h...

Duncannon Fort light with Duncannon North deceptively close (800m) behind (Facebook page) A couple of years ago, Andrew Doherty, author and guru of the wonderful Tides and Tales blog /maritime community project at Cheekpoint, asked me if I'd like to write a guest piece on the Duncannon lighthouses for the blog. Rather foolishly, I said yes. I am now shamelessly stealing the piece for this blog. Andrew's tireless researching of local history stands as a benchmark for all other communities around the coast. Reposing in the shadow of Hook Head (not literally, except during very peculiar astronomical events), the lights of Duncannon Fort might not enjoy the limelight of its illustrious neighbour but it has an interesting history nonetheless. The problem for shipping bound for Waterford in the 1700s was that, having breathed a huge sigh of relief on rounding Hook Head, they then got caught out by a nasty bar just south of Duncannon Fort. Not the sort that sells frothy pints and sta...

The leading light today on Vidal Bank (photo Pete Goulding) I knew I had posted on these two totally-unknown lighthouses back in the day but it still took me 30 minutes to find them in this blog, as I had called them the Haulbowline Front and Rear lights, little knowing that, 16 years later, I would be googling Green and Vidal and tearing the remains of my hair out. The rear light on Green Island (photo Pete Goulding) The lights are almost identical, situated 500 yards apart in the sandy shallows off Cranfield Beach on the northern side of Carlingford Lough. (For the best views, take Fair Road off the N2 and get out when you reach the coast). The one to the left (east, front) is Vidal Bank; the one to the right (west, rear) is Green Island. The only visible difference between the two is that Vidal Bank has its orange triangle pointing up, whereas Green Island's is down. Even the light characteristics -  a white light occulting every three seconds - are the same. Think I may have go...