Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Skellig Upper light It can be surmised that many lightkeepers on Irish coasts owned guns, particularly in the real old days when families lived on offshore rocks and islands and needed to shoot wildlife to supplement their diet of tinned food. The bird reports submitted to Barrington by keepers in the latter half of the nineteenth century contain many examples of birds sent to the ornithologist that had been expertly shot by the keepers. Rabbits were another source of nutrition. John Crowley shot a 'sea monster' (probably a basking shark) with a shotgun off Mutton Island in 1935. And so on. It was inevitable, therefore, that the odd accident should occur involving guns, though maybe not so many have come to light as may be imagined. (I'm not talking about fog guns, which were extremely dangerous and resulted in many serious injuries at places like the Tuskar, Rathlin Island and aboard the Princess Alexandra . As well as causing severe deafness in a lot of keepers)  In Novem...

From mayo.ie 6th October 2026 Mayo County Council is coordinating the recovery of an unusual visitor to the county's  coastline after a large Canadian Coast Guard buoy washed ashore on Achill Island  and is believed to have travelled thousands of kilometres from Canadian waters , having  completed an extraordinary journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Following contact with the Canadian Coast Guard, Mayo County Council was informed  that their buoys are known to be "very friendly" and occasionally develop a habit of  travelling far from home. The buoy, which weighs approximately 3.5 tonnes, was discovered on the shoreline in Achill.  To ensure maritime safety, Mayo County Council is arranging to recover the buoy from  the shoreline. There is a risk that it could refloat and become a hazard to vessels or coastal  infrastructure. Plans are in place to refloat the buoy and tow it to Roonagh Pier before  transporting it to one of the Council's depo...

It is now ten years since the good people of Fanad opened the doors of the lighthouse to the public. Whether you go for the tour only, or stay in the lightkeepers' dwellings, you get a taste of how the keepers lived, you see what they saw when they were up in the lantern room, you climb the same stairs that they climbed. It can never be the authentic experience but it has given thousands of visitors a taste of what the job entailed.  Aside from preserving the maritime heritage of the lighthouse and the local area, the project has given valuable employment to local people in an area that can hardly be said to be heaving with investment. And, as anybody who has visited can vouch, they are lovely people too. As part of the ten year celebrations,  Teach Solais Fhánada  is giving ten people the opportunity to stay at the lighthouse. I did this a few years ago with members of the family and it was a magical experience. I particularly enjoyed the walk to and from the local pub (...

  The Maidens (photo Larne Times archive) From the Belfast Newsletter 14th December 1962 John Noel-Crowley (528) was born on 21st December 1936 and had joined Irish Lights in May 1958. He was the son of John Crowley (LK 328) and Amelia O'Connell from Cahirciveen. His brother, Oliver (513), also made principal keeper. Any keeper I ever spoke to about him held him in high regard. Due to the problems of relief boats not being able to get out to lighthouses, and the absence of proper medical supplies at offshore stations, what we regard today as ordinary, non-dangerous illnesses, could be a cause for serious concern for lightkeepers, particularly in the pre-helicopter days.  John-Noel Crowley (1936-2022)

  Oprah chats to the Poolbeg lighthouse about surviving old age in a world of technology. Photo Oprah Winfrey

From the Irish Press 6th October 1937. In 1937, the North Wall pier in Dublin port was extended which, naturally, left the 1904 light sitting uselessly mid-pier. Should they knock it down and build it up again? Not at all. Far easier to get a giant wheelbarrow and move it bodily. Actually, I have no idea how they did it. I move my washing machine by lifting up one side and slipping a sheet of cardboard underneath. Just sayin'... Still going strong today. However, news from Dublin Port is that they are going to shorten the pier, which means her ladyship will be moving again! A previous incarnation 1888 Detail from a sketch 1864 Brocas (which one?) sketch. No date, guessing 1800-1830

From the Robinson Family Album 1906 (NLI) According to the witness statement of Michael Coleman in the military history archives, at this time of the War of Independence, a small company of men had been detailed to watch out for a yacht carrying arms for the rebels that was supposed to land between Old Head of Kinsale and Galley Head. It may have been that this was what the IRA needed the telescope for.

  Haulbowline light c 1905 (NLI) in the days when the tower was painted white Last month, I did a post on time balls , entities of which I had been totally ignorant hitherto. Basically, in order for ship's captains to know the correct time in a port, a giant ball on a long pole would be lowered at 1pm precisely. As exact timing was essential to determining longitude in the open ocean, these 'time balls' were quite widespread for about 100 years from 1829. Researching lighthouses can be seen as a bit nichey, but sometimes it leads you down interesting rabbit holes like these! The only downside, on this occasion, is that anytime I think of time-balls, I think of a group of 'rich weirdos'  gathering underneath them at 12.55, singing Lets do the time ball again. Rest in peace, Tim Curry. The legitimacy for doing a post about time balls on a lighthouse blog was a rather skimpy one – there was one on the roof of the old Ballast Board offices on the corner of Westmoreland...

The Fastnets  I suspect that when the Astronomer Royal, Sir Robert Ball, got his photos back from the pharmacy (ask your parents, kids) in 1903, he'd have been kicking himself. So close, but not quite the effect he'd been looking for. Feck! he probably said, causing his wife to look up from the stove in horror. It could have been entitled Birth of a Lighthouse , a moment in time when the shell cracked and a brand new baby lighthouse stood up and yelled for its mother. It could have been entitled Hybrid Lighthouse , a photo for all time seemingly showing one lighthouse constructed in two different styles. Maybe the constructors divided into two, and one team started at the top and the other team at the bottom and it was only when the teams met, they realised they had been working from two different plans.  It could have been entitled Death of a Lighthouse , the old 1854 structure being sucked, kicking and streaming, down the throat of a new monster emerging from the depths. I...

  Tory Island lighthouse c.1905 (CIL) (Apologies for the formatting of this post. A number of features of Blogger have decided not to work. I hope its only temporary) Soldiers are we,  whose lives are pledged to Ireland, Some have come  from a land beyond the wave.  S worn to be free,  no more our ancient sireland, Shall shelter the despot or the slave. Tonight we man the bearna bhaoil , In Erin's cause, come woe or weal, 'Mid cannons' roar and rifles' peal, We'll chant a soldier's song. The lines above are the chorus of a song, the words of which were written by Peadar Kearney  in or around 1909.  Peadar (1883-1942) had quite the life, playing truant from school in Dublin, then getting a job  in a bicycle  repair shop and eventually gaining an apprenticeship with a house painter. Politically, he joined the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. With lifelong  friend and neighbour,  Patrick Heaney (or Heeney), he w...

  From the Irish Independent 28th March 1955 Exciting times at the Bull Rock or what? First time a keeper has been injured due to extra terrestrial activity, but of course we don't know the full circumstances. The report states that Richard Roddy was struck by a rock while helping to clear debris caused by a landslide. He wasn't actually struck by a meteorite. Could be one of the other keepers was pegging rocks over his shoulder and one of these struck the unfortunate man. Which would be a lot less interesting than being hit by a fragment of rock that had probably travelled billions of miles just to hit you. Richard Roddy (1902-1994) was keeper 330 in the firmament of stars comprised of Irish lightkeepers. As the name suggests he was one of the Dundalk Roddys, grandson of Joseph Roddy the first of that name to man the lights.

The Dublin Time Ball sitting on top of the old Irish Lights offices in Dublin city centre. Photo National Library of Ireland Warning - the lighthouse element of this post is minimal, but I found it interesting anyway. In the olden days, (says he, sounding like his grandad about to embark on one of his tales demonstrating that modern life is rubbish), things we take for granted, weren't. The youngest in the family was the human remote control, photographic film had to brought to the pharmacy and a week later you could collect your 24 photographs of which at least three were black and many had thumbs encroaching on the photos; and time was quite elastic if you weren't rich enough to have a watch. If you were going out to play football in the summer evenings, you were not told to come back by 9 o'clock because neither you, nor any of your equally grubby mates, had a watch. You were told to come back when the street lights went on. If you were late home, it didn't really ma...

  I haven't recovered from this story yet.  As many of you who know me are aware, I am a great man for showing my emotions, for displaying empathy and believe in the power of true love. Just ask my wife. On second thoughts, don't. She's probably too busy humping sacks of compost around to the back garden before she gets my dinner ready. Anyway, I came across this absolute heartbreaker of a tale, courtesy the Evening Echo of 17th October 1938. I believe the journalist must have been reading the latest Barbara Cartland at the time. Oh my God! The poor pretty wee thing, gazing heartbrokenly (great adverb) across the cruel sea, waiting for her imprisoned lover to break free from his chains. How tear-inducing is that? No wonder she's distracted and forlorn. Oh my God (again)! What if she's still there, still waiting like the French Lieutenant's Woman, humming Bring Back my Bonnie to me ? I couldn't bear it, I had to check. James Joseph Dillon, 25 years of age, k...

All photos, except one, myhome.ie Five years ago, give or take, I wrote a piece about the history of Rathlin O'Birne (O'Beirne) and the keepers that served on that illustrious isle off the southwest coast of Donegal.  While listing the keepers I had come across, I wrote that 'Con Murrin,' AK, could not attend his father's funeral due to heavy seas in 1940. Another newspaper report names him as Cornelius Meenan. The minor incident above also references 'Con Meenan.' Obviously, putting Con Murrin in italics indicated that I thought that it was a newspaper typo for Con Meenan, a keeper that I knew to be on the island at that time. Connell Meenan (282) had been born on the 20th or 21st September 1892 at Malinmore, co Donegal, the son of farmer Frank and Anne Meenan. He joined Irish Lights in 1917, became an AK in 1920 and principal keeper at Inishowen on 1st August 1941. During that time, he had served on Tory Island (1919-23); Rathlin O'Birne (1923-29); Bla...