Pete's Irish Lighthouses

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...

  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...