The Arbuckle light at Donaghadee?
Donaghadee really is the lighthouse that keeps on giving. The beautifully photogenic lighthouse at the end of the pier was constructed in 1836 and has very much become a symbol of the town. I was delighted to find mentions also of two other lighthouses in Donaghadee, one dating back to 1640, the other to the mid-1770s. This latter edifice was 'a small wooden tower lit by tallow candles.' If I were a real historian, I'd spend six months trawling through indecipherable ledgers in the National Library to confirm their existence but I have a real job, and grandchildren. I wrote about the two ancient lighthouses here and it was noticeable that, whereas there were reasonably accurate dates for their establishment, there was no mention of their demise. Two months? Sixty years? It was therefore of some interest when I was looking something up on PRONI (the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland) online recently and found a letter dated September 1791 from one James Arbuckle, a ...