Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  On holidays in Ireland, my wife and I will sometimes ramble around an old cemetery, reading the gravestones, seeing which are the dominant surnames in the area and keeping our eyes out for unusual inscriptions. Yesterday we visited St. Columba's Church of Ireland in Glencolmcille, an 1828 structure, built on the site of another Protestant place of worship, a good distance away from the main part of today's village and quite near to the old lightkeepers' cottages there. Some of the headstones are very ancient, mere rocks with no markings but there are a number of quite legible slabs dating back to the 1700s and others with interesting hieroglyphics depicting freemason membership! The dominant surname, far and away, is Maxwell, with Blain being a long-distant second. Located just up the road from the cottages where the off duty lightkeepers from Rathlin O'Beirne lived, I had idly wondered if any old keepers or their wives or offspring were buried there, as many of them ...

  All photos except the bottom one taken from Malin Beg The last time I was in South west Donegal was a flying visit to photograph 1) the lighthouse at Rathlin O'Beirne 2) the keepers cottages at Glencolmcille 3) Rotten Island lighthouse and 4) St. John's Point lighthouse, as well as trying to find evidence of a short-lived lighthouse at Bruckless . Naturally enough, the day I chose for my blitzkrieg was overcast and cloudy and the photos I had travelled so far to get were kind of disappointing, particularly those of Rathlin O'Beirne, half-shrouded in a murky mist. So, this time, we are actually staying in between Carrick and Kilcar and so, visiting the incredible beach at Malin Beg and the even more incredible cliffs at Sliabh Liag, I was able to get a few snaps of RoB, with a blue sky background. On the Mullet peninsula in county Mayo, the keepers used the Napoleonic signal tower at Glosh to semaphore Blackrock lighthouse. I wonder if they did the same here? The lady in ...

  The sinking of the Gunboat Wasp off Tory Island, stylised sketch that appeared in the Illustrated London News 4th October 1884. By all accounts, the sea was relatively calm at the time! When the question is posed - as it is regularly at dinner tables across the country - as to which is the most photographed Irish lighthouse of all time, bitter arguments normally ensue. Fanad and Hook are soon at loggerheads while the Fastnet tries to stand aloof and watch the bedlam unfold. In the meantime, Poolbeg nips out to rob some hubcaps before returning to the fray. In short, there is no definitive answer to the question and all claimants to the throne have merit on their sides. When it comes to paintings, however, most lighthouses reluctantly admit there is only one real Supermodel on the coastal beacon scene. And the answer is quite surprising as it is a difficult subject to approach without a large volume of retching (well, in my case, anyway) - Tory Island. "Evening (from Derek Hill...