Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  I haven't recovered from this story yet.  As many of you who know me are aware, I am a great man for showing my emotions, for displaying empathy and believe in the power of true love. Just ask my wife. On second thoughts, don't. She's probably too busy humping sacks of compost around to the back garden before she gets my dinner ready. Anyway, I came across this absolute heartbreaker of a tale, courtesy the Evening Echo of 17th October 1938. I believe the journalist must have been reading the latest Barbara Cartland at the time. Oh my God! The poor pretty wee thing, gazing heartbrokenly (great adverb) across the cruel sea, waiting for her imprisoned lover to break free from his chains. How tear-inducing is that? No wonder she's distracted and forlorn. Oh my God (again)! What if she's still there, still waiting like the French Lieutenant's Woman, humming Bring Back my Bonnie to me ? I couldn't bear it, I had to check. James Joseph Dillon, 25 years of age, k...

All photos, except one, myhome.ie Five years ago, give or take, I wrote a piece about the history of Rathlin O'Birne (O'Beirne) and the keepers that served on that illustrious isle off the southwest coast of Donegal.  While listing the keepers I had come across, I wrote that 'Con Murrin,' AK, could not attend his father's funeral due to heavy seas in 1940. Another newspaper report names him as Cornelius Meenan. The minor incident above also references 'Con Meenan.' Obviously, putting Con Murrin in italics indicated that I thought that it was a newspaper typo for Con Meenan, a keeper that I knew to be on the island at that time. Connell Meenan (282) had been born on the 20th or 21st September 1892 at Malinmore, co Donegal, the son of farmer Frank and Anne Meenan. He joined Irish Lights in 1917, became an AK in 1920 and principal keeper at Inishowen on 1st August 1941. During that time, he had served on Tory Island (1919-23); Rathlin O'Birne (1923-29); Bla...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  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...