Dunree Head

Didn't manage to get to this lighthouse which is on the west coast of the Inishowen peninsular. Had to content myself with a photo from Portsalon on the east coast of the Fanad peninsular. Not a great photo but it was a very gloomy late November afternoon.
Built 1876.

See 2016 visit here

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

Rotten Island, county Donegal

Image
When this blog started, many moons ago, it was a simple 'visit a lighthouse, take a photo or two and add a bit of info' sort of a blog. For better and worse, it has become much more historically minded and the need to have visited has gone. So it is something of a breath of fresh air to get out and actually visit an Irish lighthouse I had never seen. So, an unexpected free day at the start of September, saw me up early and driving across the country to south-west Donegal to bag the last of the easily baggable lighthouses. I could have taken a boat tour and got pretty close to Rotten Island but the distance from the mainland seemed minimal. Basically, I got to Bruckless and, with the help of Google Maps, headed for the Atlantic View B & B, which ended at a stony beach. Parking up (making sure I left a gap for any boat-laden cars to get through) the lighthouse was visible from the beach (see next photo) The tide was low so I walked up the beach towards the lighthouse, eventua...
Read more

The Red Hut aka The Red Shed, Newry River

Image
  There are times, when researching local maritime history, when you come across a seemingly innocuous building, or an old slipway, or a weir and it spirals out of all control, opening up avenues that you'd love to have the time to pursue.  The iconic Red Hut on the Newry River (aka the Clanrye River) is a perfect example. Basically its just a corrugated iron shed, painted an unusual rusty colour almost on the border between county Down and county Louth, the Republic and the North of Ireland, the EU and the UK. As far as I can see, it has no protected status at all. Back in the 1830s, the Newry Navigation Company, eager to get decent sized ships up to Newry and beyond, were keen to enlarge the Newry Ship Canal, a three-and-a-half mile stretch of water that linked Newry to Carlingford Lough. The canal stopped short of the lough itself with a small portion uncanalised (if that's a word) around Narrow Water. In order to maintain this small stretch, the river was dredged and the m...
Read more