Warren Point revisited
Warren Point (Photo by Chris Newman)
Warrenpoint co. Down is a small town on the northern shore of Carlingford Lough and has no further involvement with this article.
Warren Point co. Donegal, on the other hand, is not even a small village. It is merely the point where a small headland hits the Foyle estuary. It is situated alongside the fairway of the 12th hole of a golf course and the only building on it is a small lighthouse.
In the 1850s, the Londonderry Port and Harbour Commissioners, as was, finally got their act together and started erecting lights from the city all the way up to the mouth of the Foyle estuary. Well, almost to its mouth. The two Inishowen lights were deemed to be sea lights and thus under the jurisdiction of the Dublin Ballast Board but the next light southwards, 2.4kms (1.5 miles) upriver, Warren Point, was at the full extent of the Commissioners' jurisdiction.
A lighthouse was built here in 1861 to provide a link in the chain between Inishowen and Redcastle light in Moville Bay 'so as to avoid the Colloway Rocks and McKenny's (now McKinney's) Bank.' The first house was a temporary wooden structure painted black - 'unsightly' as one commissioner called it in 1864 - but shortly thereafter, the present stone and brick structure was erected. According to the Commissioners' report, Warren Point shone a 'light red light.' (Pink???) The report also damned the commissioners for the poor rates of pay to the keepers.
The tower was 8m (27ft) tall and its focal plane was another 1m on top of that. These days it flashes once every 1.5 seconds but in 1861, it had a fixed red light. This was altered in 1876 to red and white lights, the latter to guide marine traffic down the coast, the red to mark the McKinney's and Tun's Banks. Originally painted white with a red abutment (to mark lights and beacons on the starboard side when coming into a harbour,) the abutment changed to green when the colour scheme changed in the 1930s.
Warren Point co. Donegal, on the other hand, is not even a small village. It is merely the point where a small headland hits the Foyle estuary. It is situated alongside the fairway of the 12th hole of a golf course and the only building on it is a small lighthouse.
In the 1850s, the Londonderry Port and Harbour Commissioners, as was, finally got their act together and started erecting lights from the city all the way up to the mouth of the Foyle estuary. Well, almost to its mouth. The two Inishowen lights were deemed to be sea lights and thus under the jurisdiction of the Dublin Ballast Board but the next light southwards, 2.4kms (1.5 miles) upriver, Warren Point, was at the full extent of the Commissioners' jurisdiction.
A lighthouse was built here in 1861 to provide a link in the chain between Inishowen and Redcastle light in Moville Bay 'so as to avoid the Colloway Rocks and McKenny's (now McKinney's) Bank.' The first house was a temporary wooden structure painted black - 'unsightly' as one commissioner called it in 1864 - but shortly thereafter, the present stone and brick structure was erected. According to the Commissioners' report, Warren Point shone a 'light red light.' (Pink???) The report also damned the commissioners for the poor rates of pay to the keepers.
The tower was 8m (27ft) tall and its focal plane was another 1m on top of that. These days it flashes once every 1.5 seconds but in 1861, it had a fixed red light. This was altered in 1876 to red and white lights, the latter to guide marine traffic down the coast, the red to mark the McKinney's and Tun's Banks. Originally painted white with a red abutment (to mark lights and beacons on the starboard side when coming into a harbour,) the abutment changed to green when the colour scheme changed in the 1930s.
The change of colour of the abutment was probably the moxt exciting thing that has happened in the lifetime of this small and retiring lighthouse. I could find no tales of steamers grounding on the rocks beneath its gaze. Doubtless in latter years, a wayward tee shot may have bounced off its unperturbed back.
It would have had a keeper, of course, but I have so far been unable to come up with a name. As it happened, the last of the keepers departed when the light was made unwatched, automatic in 1947 and the oil lamp replaced with a new acetylene gas flashing light. It was the last of the lights under the Port and Harbour Commissioners' jurisdiction to go unwatched.
Photo by Richard Cummins
Photo by John Hamilton
Photo by Richard Cummins. Note name on the tower, in case it gets lost
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