A worthless idle villain

The square tower built on the original cottage style lighthouse in 1796

There has been a lighthouse on the Copeland Islands, on the southern entrance to Belfast Lough from at least 1733, and maybe as early as 1711. It has, of course, not been the same lighthouse, nor has it even been on the same island but, such was the litany of wrecks on those three small islands and outlying rocks, that it was decided very early on that they should be lit.

Plan of the first Copeland Island lighthouse, taken from Douglas Haig and Rosemary Christie's 'Lighthouses - their architecture, history and archaeology'

The lighthouse on Cross Island (the middle island), which soon became known as Lighthouse Island – for reasons that I can’t fathom – was built by convicts and was established around 1711 or 1715 or 1733. At this time, lighthouses were cottages with a brazier on the roof. It seems that the cottage here had a bit of a square tower on it, from which coal was burned at night, roughly 400 tons a year. It served the area  until science, in the form of oil lamps, made it redundant. It was replaced in 1796 by extending to forty feet, the tower of the original cottage. Instead of the unreliable and impractical coal, the light was powered by burning six circular-wick lamps.

Griffiths Valuation map of the outer two Copeland Islands

In 1810, the Revenue Commissioners, who had only been operating the lighthouses as a sideline, handed over control to the Ballast Board of Dublin. Suddenly new lighthouses sprang up all around Ireland and old lighthouses were revamped. A new circular lighthouse tower, fifty two feet high, was built next to the old one, and the old tower was dismantled until only a stump remained. This new light was now 131 feet above high water and visible for sixteen miles. It was established in 1815.

And thus it remained, until they finally twigged that it would be better to have the light on the outermost of the islands, rather than on the middle one. And so the Mew Island lighthouse was born in 1884 and the tower on Cross Island truncated.

The circular 1815 light tower and the 1796 square tower

But we'll go back in time to 1772, when Finn's Leinster Journal's 18th November edition appeared. This would have been at the time of the first, small, square tower, from which a fire blazed every night.

Or should have.

In 1744, Walter Harris brought out his best-seller, The Antient (sic) and Present State of the County of Down, in which he describes Cross Island in some detail: -

It was a shame of course that Walter doesn't name the family. I wonder if it was the same family that occupied the island and tended the light 28 years later?

In November 1782, according to Finn, the sloop, Lady Loup, from Tarbert in Scotland, was lost off the Copelands and eight of the eleven crew drowned. The three survivors earnestly requested that it may be published, for the welfare and safety of others who may depend on a light being kept on the Copeland Island, that the want of such a light was the cause of their destruction; for that, when they had run the distance of it, there was no light to be seen, and they became thereby totally at a loss what course to steer. They beg of the Magistrates and other rulers of that light-house, to remove forever out of the Copeland Island, the present lightman, his friends, family and effects, he being a worthless, idle villain. 

Remains of the 1815 circular lighthouse on Cross Island

James Crawford sent me this photo of himself on the steps of the 1815 lighthouse many moons ago. James has actually spent a lifetime working on Belfast Lough in one capacity or another.