Pete's Irish Lighthouses

From the Robinson Family Album 1906 (NLI) According to the witness statement of Michael Coleman in the military history archives, at this time of the War of Independence, a small company of men had been detailed to watch out for a yacht carrying arms for the rebels that was supposed to land between Old Head of Kinsale and Galley Head. It may have been that this was what the IRA needed the telescope for.

  Haulbowline light c 1905 (NLI) in the days when the tower was painted white Last month, I did a post on time balls , entities of which I had been totally ignorant hitherto. Basically, in order for ship's captains to know the correct time in a port, a giant ball on a long pole would be lowered at 1pm precisely. As exact timing was essential to determining longitude in the open ocean, these 'time balls' were quite widespread for about 100 years from 1829. Researching lighthouses can be seen as a bit nichey, but sometimes it leads you down interesting rabbit holes like these! The only downside, on this occasion, is that anytime I think of time-balls, I think of a group of 'rich weirdos'  gathering underneath them at 12.55, singing Lets do the time ball again. Rest in peace, Tim Curry. The legitimacy for doing a post about time balls on a lighthouse blog was a rather skimpy one – there was one on the roof of the old Ballast Board offices on the corner of Westmoreland...

The Fastnets  I suspect that when the Astronomer Royal, Sir Robert Ball, got his photos back from the pharmacy (ask your parents, kids) in 1903, he'd have been kicking himself. So close, but not quite the effect he'd been looking for. Feck! he probably said, causing his wife to look up from the stove in horror. It could have been entitled Birth of a Lighthouse , a moment in time when the shell cracked and a brand new baby lighthouse stood up and yelled for its mother. It could have been entitled Hybrid Lighthouse , a photo for all time seemingly showing one lighthouse constructed in two different styles. Maybe the constructors divided into two, and one team started at the top and the other team at the bottom and it was only when the teams met, they realised they had been working from two different plans.  It could have been entitled Death of a Lighthouse , the old 1854 structure being sucked, kicking and streaming, down the throat of a new monster emerging from the depths. I...

  Tory Island lighthouse c.1905 (CIL) (Apologies for the formatting of this post. A number of features of Blogger have decided not to work. I hope its only temporary) Soldiers are we,  whose lives are pledged to Ireland, Some have come  from a land beyond the wave.  S worn to be free,  no more our ancient sireland, Shall shelter the despot or the slave. Tonight we man the bearna bhaoil , In Erin's cause, come woe or weal, 'Mid cannons' roar and rifles' peal, We'll chant a soldier's song. The lines above are the chorus of a song, the words of which were written by Peadar Kearney  in or around 1909.  Peadar (1883-1942) had quite the life, playing truant from school in Dublin, then getting a job  in a bicycle  repair shop and eventually gaining an apprenticeship with a house painter. Politically, he joined the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. With lifelong  friend and neighbour,  Patrick Heaney (or Heeney), he w...

  From the Irish Independent 28th March 1955 Exciting times at the Bull Rock or what? First time a keeper has been injured due to extra terrestrial activity, but of course we don't know the full circumstances. The report states that Richard Roddy was struck by a rock while helping to clear debris caused by a landslide. He wasn't actually struck by a meteorite. Could be one of the other keepers was pegging rocks over his shoulder and one of these struck the unfortunate man. Which would be a lot less interesting than being hit by a fragment of rock that had probably travelled billions of miles just to hit you. Richard Roddy (1902-1994) was keeper 330 in the firmament of stars comprised of Irish lightkeepers. As the name suggests he was one of the Dundalk Roddys, grandson of Joseph Roddy the first of that name to man the lights.

The Dublin Time Ball sitting on top of the old Irish Lights offices in Dublin city centre. Photo National Library of Ireland Warning - the lighthouse element of this post is minimal, but I found it interesting anyway. In the olden days, (says he, sounding like his grandad about to embark on one of his tales demonstrating that modern life is rubbish), things we take for granted, weren't. The youngest in the family was the human remote control, photographic film had to brought to the pharmacy and a week later you could collect your 24 photographs of which at least three were black and many had thumbs encroaching on the photos; and time was quite elastic if you weren't rich enough to have a watch. If you were going out to play football in the summer evenings, you were not told to come back by 9 o'clock because neither you, nor any of your equally grubby mates, had a watch. You were told to come back when the street lights went on. If you were late home, it didn't really ma...