Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Following on from the speculative Ardglass No.1 and the patriarchal Ardglass No.2, I have decided to dedicate this post to Nos. 3 and 4 together as it would be logistically impossible to separate the two. We left Ardglass with business booming. A south pier had been constructed with a new lighthouse at the end of it (1817) and the herring was being landed in large amounts. Steam packets were plying their trade between Ardglass and Liverpool and the Isle of Man and dwelling houses for rent were constantly being advertised in the newspapers as the town sought to promote itself as a health spa. However, there had been criticism in various quarters that the south pier had not gone far enough. Literally. A longer pier would offer more protection and would accommodate a much larger amount of boats. An Act of Parliament in 1830 delivered a method of redress. Harbour commissioners could now borrow money on the strength of future harbour dues and Ardglass's landlord, William Ogilvie, who ha...

Before I get into this lighthouse, I may point out that the whole history of the Ardglass lighthouses was related to me by a very kind and patient man called Michael Howland, a local Ardglass historian, shopkeeper and brewer, without whom I would only have vague notions of the quare goings-on in the port during the last century! As we saw in Ardglass lighthouse No.1 , Ardglass had, for many centuries, been one of the major fishing ports on the east coast of Ireland but, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, its usefulness had begun to wane. At the time, Ardglass, was owned by one Lord Charles Fitzgerald who, due to financial constraints, sold it to his stepfather William Ogilvie in 1806. A rather unflattering sketch of William Ogilvy! Ogilvy was evidently straining at the leash to redevelop Ardglass into a major fishing port. He immediately started making plans for building a new harbour to accommodate the fishing fleet. Geographically, as Alexander Nimmo says in 1822,  "Ard...

Last night, I dreamt of Ardglass again. Well, no, that's not true but my recent quest to find very early lighthouses led me back to thinking of the day eleven years ago when I made my only visit to the small fishing port. In those days, my blog was a mere photograph and brief description of the light and how to get there with little about the history of the light. These days I have become more aware of maritime history and the need to record it and preserve it. For such a relatively small town, it seems amazing that Ardglass had five definite lighthouses and possibly a sixth, if my conjecturing in this post turns out to be true. Not only that but none of them were built on the same location. And none of them shone in conjunction with another. To my untrained ear, that sounds pretty unique! Anyway, I have been trying to prove the theory that in certain parts of the country in the Middle Ages, fires were lit on top of coastal towers to guide ships into the harbour. This certain...

I have written before about the Spider Light    as it is known locally. One of the great Alexander Mitchell's screwpile lighthouses - it sits at the end of a rather nasty sandbank on the River Barrow between Passage East in county Waterford and Arthurstown in county Wexford. The light celebrated its 150th anniversary a few years ago though it was too infirm to appreciate it.  Photo by Trabas Alexander Mitchell was a Belfast engineer who patented the Screwpile lighthouse - basically a lighthouse on stilts that could be screwed into sandy seabeds where normal lighthouses would fear to tread. Spit Lighthouse in Cork Harbour is probably the most famous and looking pretty dandy after its relatively recent spruce-up. There is another off Moville on the River Foyle, also not looking too bad and in Dundalk Harbour, which is too far from the coast for me to ascertain its condition. Together with the forlorn Passage Point, they constitute the last remaining Mitchell pile...

I have been trying, for many moons now, to get a definitive list of the oldest lighthouses around the coast of Ireland. As many of you realise, I am not particularly academic, so my research will never be published as a 'paper' or a thesis or whatever it is they call scholarly works on maritime history. To fix an arbitrary date, I have been working on pre-1700 lighthouses. These are, of course, few and far between, all of them probably coal-burning braziers atop a house or tower. Anyway, to cut to the chase, the 'definitive list' - which I am hoping can be added to - is as follows:- 1) The Old Head of Kinsale . In 1665, Robert Reading received a patent to run six lighthouses around the coast of Ireland and to extract taxes from shopping for them. The lighthouse off the sea at Howth was never built, so that leaves five. The cottage from which the fire burnt at the Old Head is still standing. 2) Barry Oge's castle  - Presumably a light was shone from a tower ...

So, it's 2020. Coronavirus year, as it will forever be known. In years to come, grandchildren will be asking, "What did you do during the lockdown?"  Well? "Hmm. I drank rather a lot of beer. Got sunburnt in the garden. Walked around the estate. Slept a lot..." But, did you not take the opportunity to do something artistic or constructive? Something you always wanted to do but never had the time? Cue, Noel and Geraldine Cavanagh from Kilnamanagh in Dublin. Noel, a retired stone mason, had had a yearning over the years, to build a lighthouse in his garden but, due to life getting in the way, he had never managed to get around to it.  Then, when Covit19 struck, being forced to cocoon at home, the couple discovered that when one door closes, another opens and work began in earnest on the long-planned project. The project took nearly three months to complete. It stands two and a half meters tall and even has its own small scope flashing light, a...