Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Birds and lighthouses have always had a strange sort of relationship. Keepers, both of lighthouses and lightships, were often recruited as amateur ornithologists and encouraged to send specimens to scientific organisations. Some of them actually became quite professional and were able to identify birds rarely if ever seen on our coasts. At night, birds are attracted to the beams, often flying straight at the glass and extinguishing themselves rather than the light. Keepers have often reported hundreds of birds lying dead and stunned at the base of a lighthouse on waking up in the morning. Some would fly straight at the lantern and break their beaks. Others would throttle themselves on the lattice work surrounding the lantern, some would fall prey to lighthouse cats. Ducks were no exception, migrating birds often finding the warm glow of the lighthouse beam a tempting encouragement to break their journey and rest. According to nineteenth century reports, many were killed by breaking the...

Loop Head today ( By Charles W Glynn, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1909644) 'In far Loop Head did somebody a stately small lighthouse erect ...' So begins the first draft of  Samuel T aylor Coleridge's epic poem "Kubla Khan," which sadly veered off the subject of pharology in later versions. It was a shame that Sammy didn't mention when the lighthouse was built and by whom, as it would have avoided a lot of confusion among today's lighthouse historians. At the tip of the Loop or Leam peninsula, there is a wonderfully photogenic rock lying parallel to the cliff face. Legend has it that Cu Culainn, pursued by an old woman, leapt from the mainland onto the rock. The woman followed. Summoning all his strength, The Hound leapt back and the old woman, trying to do the same, fell to her death. (I'm sure I saw this in a film on the New York subway) Hence the name Cuchullins Leap. OSI First edition map Who built the first lighth...

The South Rock lighthouse three miles off the coast of county Down is, as we all know, the oldest wave-washed lighthouse in the world, still standing and is therefore criminally overlooked by our maritime historians, possibly because it is difficult to get up close to. The only surviving Thomas Rogers lighthouse, I'd better do a decent post about it soon, but for now, this post is about the keepers. Built in 1797, the first keepers and their families lived in the tower itself. It was a single family operation, no relief keepers, and a boat came once a week from Newcastle pier, the nearest place on the shore. The pier had been constructed specifically to aid the construction of the lighthouse and lay in the townland of Newcastle, on the southern shore of Millin Bay. (This should not be confused with the town of Newcastle further down the county Down coast, though I confuse the two frequently) It is said that the first keeper was a man named McCullough and there is a possibly apocryp...

Many thanks to Andrew Phillips for the wonderful photo above. I thought it was taken from nearby Dalkey Island but it is from near Colliemore Harbour in Dalkey. In the past I have tried to photo the Kish lighthouse from Howth, from Poolbeg and even from the Holyhead ferry with little success but, as Andrew points out, Dalkey is the nearest spot on the mainland. Don't think I've ever seen a photo of two of Ireland's newest lighthouses together. The Muglins is the outermost of a series of islands and rocks off the coast off  Dalkey in south county Dublin. The only thing on it is the lighthouse. The best views are from nearby Martello-Towered Dalkey Island, which can be accessed via Ken the Ferryman who operates out of Colliemore Harbour. In 1765, the Sandwich  (a boat, not a large chunk of bread and ham) set sail from the Canaries, richly laden, bound for London. While rounding Brittany, four of the crew murdered the other three crew members and the passengers, save for two b...

Yet another lost lighthouse, short-lived and precious little known about it. Any further information would be gratefully received. A photo would be nice, but I don't hold out much hope! Historic last edition OS map showing location of the Cliff lighthouse, midway between the two train stations I have written about the lighthouse near the end of the Ballygeary Pier before and learned no more about it. It had a lightkeeper and by the end of the 1880s was reportedly 'not used for many years.' Further research has raised more questions than it does answers and to complicate matters, we now have another lost lighthouse to contend with. It seems the Ballygeary pier light was working at least by 1881 even though the 1891 US Bureau of Commerce, Special Consular Report Vol. 4 (a cracking read by anybody's standards) states it was established in 1884. At the same time, it says, a green flashing light was established from a white perch on the cliff 1.3 miles NW by W, at a height o...