The keepers of Poer Head, a blind dog named Fido and a kitten

 

Poer Head Fog Signal station 2014

It is now ten years since I visited Poer Head, famously one of only two Irish Lights stations that didn't have a light. (Mizen Head was the other but that was lit in 1959. You could theoretically also count Inishtrahull, which had a light at one end of the island and a fog signal at the other, until the new light was erected) The fog signal here was established in 1879 to help keep safe the notoriously foggy shores of East Cork but its lack of a light, together with its location in a very sparsely populated part of the country meant it very much went under the radar. In fact, not only did very few of the neighbours know about it, but sometimes even its keepers had never heard about it. I wrote about Poer Head previously here
The end for Poer Head came in 1970. This is an account of the closure as recorded by the Irish Examiner 15th October of that year.

And to round things off, because the story of lighthouses is very much the story of the keepers, a few of the men who served at that isolated spot during those 91 years. This is not a complete list (any additions welcome) and represent the results of a quick search of my database. Years mentioned are those when they were actually there - their terms could have lasted longer either before or after.

The keepers' cottages 2014

Three rarely seen pictures of the landing place (Joy and Patrick Tubby 2023): -

Commissioners and keepers walking up the same steps 117 years previously

The fog station CIL 1906