Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  This is the house where Joe Roddy was born in the 1930s. As a member of the famous Roddy lightkeeping dynasty that began with his great-grandfather, born around 1811, it is unsurprising that his entrance into the world should be at a lighthouse, in this case Roches Point at the entrance to Cork harbour. Joe's dad was Pat Roddy, keeper 292, born in 1994 and subsequently retired in 1954. By the time Joe was a teenager, the family had relocated back to their ancestral home in Dundalk, where great-grandad Joe had worked as an assistant, second-class, which meant he had no lodgings provided, as he lived local, but was also immune from transfer. He was probably the first lightkeeper at Dundalk. when it was established in 1855. Dundalk, one of three pile lights in Ireland successfully built by blind engineer Alexander Mitchell In 1949, surfing was practically unheard of in Ireland. The 14-year-old Joe saw a picture of a surfer out in California and was determined to try and emulate the ...

No prizes for guessing the trio of lighthouses on the front cover! As part of the production of the next issue of Lamp , I was blessed with the opportunity to write two reviews for books recently published. I'm not particularly easy about writing reviews because it implies I know what I'm talking about, which is not always the case, and I'm also not happy about criticising people who may have struggled for years to produce their own labour of love. Fortunately neither of the two books warranted criticism. One of the books is Lighthouses of Wales by Warren Kovach - naff title but a great read, telling the story of lighthouses generally, through examples of the Welsh variety. But that is outside the jurisdiction of this blog. The other book is The Lightkeeper's Legacy by Martha Power Baxter, the story of her Power ancestors and how they ended up in America. It would be wrong of me to reproduce my review of the the latter book before Lamp 146 comes out at the end of Nov...