Seaward view from the top of the old High light
Pete's Irish Lighthouses
A blog about Irish Lighthouses past and present and other selected maritime beacons and buoys of interest. If anybody has any corrections or additional info on any post, please use the comment section or the email address on the right.
Monday, November 4, 2024
The first Wicklow Head low lighthouse
Seaward view from the top of the old High light
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Tidal beacons
Detail from the last edition OS map
The tidal beacons on Omey Island are much less impressive, although the sand underfoot is much firmer and dries out quicker, as there is a longer window of opportunity to get across and back. Basically, these beacons are simply glorified road signs and possess no historical or architectural merit. And they'd be pretty tricky to hang on to in an emergency. Incidentally, that's more of my family in the centre of the picture, Brenda, my sister-in-law, Monica, my wife, and Dave, my brother-in-law. Photo taken from the island looking back over to the mainland.
Feenish is a bit wetter, possibly up to your knees if you can find a good route. Neither it nor Shenick has beacons. And nobody in their right mind would attempt Mutton Island in county Clare, not to be confused with Mutton Island in Galway, which has the lighthouse.
Anyway, despite this 'roadway,' people kept on losing their way and drowning, particularly at night, so, like Coney, the locals went down the route of marking the path with beacons. However, unlike Coney, they only built two, one at either end of the walk. And, according to the Buildings of Ireland website, it seems that these could have been lit at night to guide the weary traveller home.
This is the beacon at Carraig Airt. These days it is situated on a new waterfront. Although it dates back to around 1910, it is suggested that it replaced some other marker. The light fitting, they say, is modern, but it originally had an older light fitting.
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Ballycurrin revisted
Thursday, October 10, 2024
The lighthouse scuppered by common sense
OS map of Clew Bay. Clare Island is middle left; Achillbeg is top left; Old Head is bottom middle; Westport bottom right; Inishgort just to the right of the Y in Clew Bay; Newport just off map top right.
It may be difficult to contemplate but in 1797 the lighthouse at Loop Head was the only official light on the west coast of Ireland. I suspect there were many unofficial lights - from braziers atop towers to simple coal-burning fires on headlands but our knowledge of them is limited to an odd throwaway sentence here and there.
The appalling toll on shipping (and, to a lesser extent, human life) on the dark coasts of Ireland led to calls from shipowners and merchants to light up the coast, particularly in places where sea-going commerce ventured, such as Galway, Westport and Sligo. Which, in turn, led to surveys being carried out to determine the best places to put these lights, at the Government's expense.
According to one James M. O'Donnel in the Dublin Evening Post of 18th March 1797, in an open letter to the 'Merchants and Insurance Companies in Great Britain and Ireland,' the Clew Bay coast had already been surveyed by the Rt. Hon. Burton Conyngham and the Royal Navy's Lt. Drury. O'Donnel says that he has reason to believe that Achillbeg or Blackrock were the locations recommended to the Government for a lighthouse to be erected. (This was very insightful of the two gentlemen surveyors, as lighthouses were indeed erected on both locations in 1965 and 1864 respectively)
John Hamilton photo of Clare Island lighthouse. The original light was in the smaller tower capped by the black roof. It was accidentally burnt down by Reilly, the first keeper, and a temporary light was exhibited until the higher tower was built a few years later. The white dot on the hillside behind is Achillbeg lighthouse
However, JMo says, with astonishment dripping from every word he writes, that he has recently read that the Government's Committee of Supply has voted a sum of £2,650 to be expended on the construction of a lighthouse "on the Old Head, Clare Bay." (I have been unable to find this source)
Now, JMo had got onto Google Maps and couldn't find an Old Head in Clare Bay and surmised that the application was meant to refer to the Old Head in Clew Bay (aka Newport-Pratt Bay) near Clare Island. If he was right, and he was as sure as shite he was, the Old Head, which had many attractive attributes, such as a beautiful sandy beach and a bit of a quay, was a ridiculous place to build a lighthouse because the beam would be blocked by Clare Island and would not be seen by ships arriving by sea. It would be great, he said, for boats sailing over from Clare Island itself, but was spending £2,650 on this be good value for money? You might as well, he said, coining a phrase still in use today, build a lighthouse in the Bog of Allen.
He also went on to infer that certain people knew all this but had personal reasons for the project to go ahead. And that the 'clerical error' of the wrong address was, in fact, a deliberate ploy to deter objections until after the lighthouse was built. (One can imagine the Earl of Murrisk, or whoever it was, throwing off his mask and yelling "I'd have got away with it if it hadn't been for you pesky O'Donnels" as he was led away in handcuffs)
Needless to say, a lighthouse never adorned the Old Head. The Marquess of Sligo built a lighthouse on Clare Island in 1806 (to guide ships into Clew Bay) and another around the same time on Inishgort to mark the way through the long sandy bar that blocked the way to Westport. After only 159 years, they realised that the light on Clare Island was too high and replaced it with Achillbeg, as had been advised pre-1797.
Totally gratuitous photo of Inishgort lighthouse in Clew, not Clare, Bay, included here simply because it is one of my favourites
James Moore O'Donnel was the second son of Sir Neal O'Donnel who owned Burrishoole, the area around the eastern end of Clew Bay including both Newport and Westport. He was the Commander of the Newport Pratt Cavalry and a staunch loyalist. He lost his life in 1806 in a duel with the extremely unlovely Major Denis Bingham by the shores of Enniscrone in county Sligo. According to one tale, not only was O'Donnel lame and blind in one eye, but Bingham fired before the word was given and shot him through the heart.
Friday, October 4, 2024
I will arise and go now, and go to Inishnee
The road on the island begins at the bridge and finishes about a third of the way down the southern section. It is a lovely place for a looped walk but at 7am in the morning, I was more concerned about reaching the lighthouse at the southern end of the island.
I decided to drive to the end of the road and walk from there. I wore my hiking boots and had a stick, both of which I needed. From the end of the road, I walked south down the bridle path and then turned right. Hopping over a wooden fence I then turned left and upwards. I could see the black water tank on the summit of the hill and made for that. There were a couple of places where the fence had no barbed wire on top, so I precariously crossed the fence there.
At the top, I could see the lighthouse down below southwards, so I made for it in a straight line. Unfortunately, on the crest, the incline of the descent was a little too steep for my liking, so I turned eastwards until the incline flattened out a bit. I'd say roughly 25 minutes from the car to lighthouse.
That 1961 was the year of establishment of the current light is actually doubtful, despite the fact that I cannot find a Notice to Mariners. The Connaught Tribune of 9th December 1961 says that, despite the bad weather, work was progressing at the lighthouse. The same paper on Saturday January 20th 1962 says the new type of battery-system lighthouse at Inishnee was turned on for the first time on Monday night, which would have been the 15th January 1962. Of course, newspaper reports are not carved in stone, unlike the inscription at the foot at the southern-facing side of the light.
We have seen that the first light was established on the southern point of the island in 1910 and that it had a white and a red sector. The British Pilot for 1917 adds that the lights came from an white pillar. Lighthouse Digest says they came from an iron tower. I am therefore taking it that the first structure, for which I have been unable to source a photograph, was a white, iron pillar-tower. What I did discover on my visit was the remains of something that had been bolted to the rock just to the south of the light. It would have been quite a thin pillar if they were the pillar-tower's foundations.
The little step near the door of the lighthouse, as former keepers will know, is to hold a ladder without it slipping, so a second person doesn't have to stand on the bottom rung to hold it steady. There are two eyelets on the roof (see top photo) which must be to secure the ladder at the top. From this, we can surmise that a) the ladder is kept inside the hut - the attendant would hardly bring it with him and b) that the servicing of the lights is done from without rather than within. Though, judging by the rust on the lock, I doubt it gets serviced very often.
From the northeast. I think this photo shows that, even though sceptics may deride the ugliness of the subject matter, its setting, together with its history, makes the trip worthwhile.