Posts

O Meara and Robinson, Irish Lights painters

Image
  Patrick O Meara, in heroic pose, possibly on the Tuskar. Photo courtesy Liam O Meara Back in the day, when I had ludicrous notions that I could make it as a serious poet, I used to enter the odd poetry competition and, if feasible, attended the awards, whether I was nominated or not. One of my favourites was the annual Francis Ledwidge Poetry Awards competition, run essentially by Liam O Meara from Inchicore, a legend in that suburb for his work on Ledwidge, on poetry and on local history. Memories of Liam and those poetry nights came flooding back when I came across a Facebook post in which a Liam O Meara commented that his grandfather had served as a painter on Loop Head. Eager to learn more, I messaged him and we agreed to meet in Small Changes , a wine and coffee house on Emmet Road in Inchicore, despite the fact that this was deep in St Pat's territory. And yes, it was the same Liam O Meara! I have written previously about the Black family , a father and son and grandson pai...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sheep's Head

Image
  In the 1960s, Gulf Oil built large holding tanks on Whiddy Island that would temporarily store crude oil from the Gulf before it was shipped on around northern Europe. Supertankers (300,000 tons +) would arrive and deposit their vast cargoes, and slightly smaller ones (c.100,000 tons) would then arrive and fill up with oil for refineries like Southampton and Rotterdam. With such a vital commodity and multi-billion pound cargo, it was decided that a light needed to be placed at the end of the Sheep's Head peninsula to aid the increase in large ocean traffic to the pleasantly rural location.  At the same time, it was decided to increase the range of the light at Mizen Head. Large tankers would be able to plot their course using the RACON and the Radio Beacon at that station before being guided by the new light into Bantry Bay. The RACON in particular could be picked up by a ship 35 miles out to sea. During June 1968, all the materials needed for the construction of the lightho...
Post a Comment
Read more

Seagulls' eggs

Image
  A totally unrelated but beautiful Pat Cook photo of Aranmore at sunset That’s what they used to call us, says Ciarán O’Bríaín, lightkeeper 570 in the pantheon of Irish Lights’ personnel.   Seagulls’ eggs. Children of lightkeepers who were born on the ledge on which their parents happened to alight. A cursory check of Irish censuses will show a wonderful geographical spread of ‘place of birth’ for the keeper, his wife and seven children which incidentally is a very handy way to work out the stations the father served at to that point. In Ireland, in particular, a sense of place and belonging is deeply rooted in the psyche. You will grow up and be known all your life as a Wexfordman or a Donegal man or a Limerick man, or whatever county you happened to pop out into the sunlight in. And that will very much mark you down, in the eyes of others, as the type of person you are. It is all down to local history and folk memory and the trials and tribulations endured by that particul...
1 comment
Read more

The Ross Coastguard Station in photographs

Image
  This is the Ross Coastguard station about a mile north of Killala in county Mayo. I wrote about it here in July 2022 because, well, it did officially shine a light from the top window to mark the limit of a reef to the north and the entrance to Killala harbour to the south. Hence it was, to all intents and purposes, a lighthouse, though not a purpose-built one. My wife and I spent a week up here at the end of March/start of April. It was cold and windy but a beautiful and historic part of the country. The history is everywhere in the countryside from the 3500bc Ceide Fields to countless burial tombs and standing stones and from the relatively intact monasteries and abbeys at Moyne and Rosserk and Rathfran to the site of the French landing at Kilcummin in 1798. Just to place exactly where I'm talking about, here's a Google map: - The blue bit is Killala Bay, an offshoot of Sligo Bay. The river, bottom centre, is the Moy, a famous salmon river that leads down to Ballina and be...
Post a Comment
Read more

The relief of lightships Kish and Codling

Image
Model of the Cormorant lightship, Codling Bank.  The following article appeared in the Irish Press of 21st June 1955. Words by Dominick Coyle. Pictures by Bill St Ledger. Although parts of it are quite interesting, I feel the journalist could have done so much more with the opportunity he got! Just imagine it – you can walk through the waters of the Irish Sea nine miles from Dun Laoghaire amid 90 feet of water. That is, you can....theoretically. The sausage-like chain of sandbanks running from the Kish Bank with breaks down to Wexford shows its face occasionally at low water. The benefit to Ireland of these banks is negligible; their nuisance value is considerable. Yet their nuisance value can certainly outweigh their usefulness, even in time of war. Their presence is a menace to navigation; and in themselves they are an expensive liability to the Commissioners of Irish Lights. This liability is efficiently met in many ways, not least among them being the lightships at Kish, Codl...
Post a Comment
Read more

The inauguration of Inishtrahull lighthouse 8th October 1958

Image
  July 2024 pic of the new light on Inishtrahull The new lighthouse on Inishtrahull was the first major lighthouse constructed in Ireland since Rathlin West. Smaller lights such as Blackhead in Clare had been added to the list but Inishtrahull was the first large light to be built since 1916. There would only be one more – the Kish. I have no idea where I obtained the following little presentation from but it may well have belonged to somebody who took part in the 'Hull's inauguration ceremony on the 8th October 1958, nearly seventy years ago. It took the form of a little booklet with the programme of events, three photos, evidently recently taken, and a prepared potted history of the light. To be fair, I'd have loven to be a part of that trip, provided they had some Jaffa cakes as part of the afternoon tea. Unfortunately, to quote a line from a Ponytails song of the time, why was it my fate/ to be born too late? A couple of points about the itinerary. Around 1880, it was t...
2 comments
Read more

Drogheda North restoration complete

Image
  Members of the conservation project team in front of the recently restored lighthouse Nine years after the restoration of Drogheda North lighthouse was announced comes the very good news that it has finally been completed. T he project was undertaken by Drogheda Port Company under the supervision of conservation architect Fergal McGirl and supported through the Built Heritage Investment Scheme administered by Meath County Council. The North lighthouse was one of three lights erected on the Boyne estuary foreshore in 1842. Constructed by Messrs. Carolan of Talbot Street at a cost of £450 each, the East and West lights were built on tramways to guide ships up the channel; as the channel moved, so the lights were moved along the tramways, at least in the early years. The Drogheda North light, the one with the dwellings, is not a large structure, and one might ask how it took nine years for the restoration to be completed.  Covid, of course, took a large chunk of that time and ...
Post a Comment
Read more