Swan Island, Strangford


This is situated smack bang in the middle of the entrance to Strangford Lough. I didn't take the ferry, so this is taken from Strangford.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ballast Bank, Wexford

Image
I am indebted to Redmond O'Brien - how much more Wexfordian can you get? - for alerting me to the unusual green buoy marking the danger of the Ballast Bank situated in Wexford harbour. For some reason, this light does not appear on Trabas, one of the very few omissions I have come across in that wonderful resource. In fact, I have found nothing online about the light. Regarding the Ballast Bank, itself, it is an artificial island, constructed so that ships might pick up or discharge ballast on entering or leaving Wexford Harbour. Most sources give the date of construction as 1937, though the architecture of Ireland site - which really should have the inside track on these sort of things - dates the island back to 1831. I'm no expert, but the light itself seems older than 1937. Someone should bring it in to the Antiques Roadshow. Below, a drone's eye view of the island, which I filched from Wexford Hub, an excellent site about all things Wexford.
Read more

The Irish Lighthouse History Keeper - Traditional Maritime Scenery

Image
I was contacted recently by a very nice guy called Nick from Holywood, county Down. Nick makes beautiful short films recording the Ireland that he sees around him, from winter scenes to lakes and forests, skies, whatever captures his interest. He had become interested in lighthouses (there are a good few in his part of our coast!) and was wondering if I'd do a voice-over for a lighthouse film.  Now I'm a stammerer and was hesitant (pun intended) but Nick is the type of feller who can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and he has made me sound almost fluent. I'm not sure the piece was supposed to be about me but that's how it's turned out.
Read more

Holywood Bank aka Belfast Lough (Lost lighthouse)

Image
It seems to me odd that after 300+ posts, this is my first post about a Belfast lighthouse. One of Ireland's major ports, at one time it seemed it had so many lighthouses that boats entering the harbour found it hard avoiding them. (I'm exaggerating of course but at least three met their ends at the hands of moving objects!) The history of these lights is something I have been trying to unravel and a tortuous exercise it is too as there is a lot of contradictory evidence around. But for this post I will confine myself to the outermost of the Belfast lights.  Nowadays, there are no lighthouses at Belfast, as such. Plenty of lights and buoys and beacons but the lighthouses are all gone, unless you count the Great Optic on the Maritime Mile in the Titanic Quarter, which I do and which I have yet to visit. The above lighthouse is the Holywood Bank Lighthouse (aka Belfast Lough lighthouse) (b.1844 d.1889) At least, I think it is. Every copy of this photo describes it as the...
Read more