Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  To very quickly set the scene; the first lighthouse on the Aran Islands in Galway Bay was built in the centre of Inis Mor, the largest island, from where it could be seen from everywhere in the vicinity. Except when it was cloudy, or misty, or foggy. In the 1850s, therefore, this light was extinguished and replaced by two lights, one at the northern end of the chain of islands, one at the southern end at a much lower level. Problem solved. "Erm, excuse me, " (or words to that effect) said the fishermen who plied their trade out of the islands' largest port, Kilronan. "Now there's no light to lead us into port." "Oh yeah," said the Ballast Board. "Never thought of that." And so, twenty-four years later in 1878, the fishermen, many of who had drowned by this time, finally got their harbour light on Straw Island. Straw Island is composed mainly of sand and rocks and a bit of a green area in the middle. It is small, roughly 11 acres at lo...

  The old Ferris Point lighthouse. I'm guessing this photograph is probably 19th century, due to the fashion and the fact that the lightkeeper's dwelling appears to be single-storey. The lower photograph was taken shortly after the two people and the dog fell down a large sink-hole. A lighthouse was first established on the southern entrance to Larne Harbour on 1st February 1839 on a headland named Ferris Point, Farres Point or any variation of the two. It is also called Larne lighthouse or Islandmagee lighthouse, sitting as it did on the northern end of that peninsula, bookended by Blackhead lighthouse at its southern point. View of the old Ferris Point lighthouse, with the new dwellings, looking out to sea,. I'm assuming the guillotine on the right of the picture was erected by some over-zealous Principal Keeper. During the 1890s, when the keepers and their families were still living out on the Maidens Rocks, there was a clamour for Irish Lights to provide mainland housin...

Once upon a time, whenever I travelled down to Cork, I would invariably head west when I hit the Dunkettle roundabout, heading for the beautiful grandeur of the Sheep's Head or Mizen peninsulas. It is only through my lighthouse interest that I have ever ventured into East Cork to see the pharological specimens at Roches Point, Poer Head, Youghal and Ballycotton. People sometimes ask me why I love lighthouses and the answer I usually give is that it gets me off the beaten track to wonderful places I would otherwise have never visited.  It is actually thirteen years since I visited the lighthouse at Youghal , which is quite criminal for someone whose hobby borders on the obsessional. (And, at the risk of boring my Irish readers to tears, any mention of this place must include the explanation for non-natives that the town is pronounced Yawl, as in the boat. Hence the poor attempt at a pun in the title.) A few years ago, I wrote about the old lighthouse at Youghal which rivals Hook fo...

The old lighthouse at Oghil (Eochaill) at the highest point of Inis Mor. The lighthouse first shone in 1818 but was found to be built at too high an elevation and was often shrouded in low cloud and mist. In addition, they painted it white, so, as a daymark, it was frequently lost in the background of the sky. I rish Lights has complete records of lightkeepers and their postings from 1919 onwards. Going backwards from that, the records become fewer and patchier. The two censuses in 1901 and 1911 help us trace who was where in April of those years and an 1871 list of keepers in the organisation does the same. By the time we get back to the first half of the nineteenth century, an odd name crops up here or there but these are hard won and lack any kind of detail. The two exceptions to this are the amazing Michael Wishart and his roller-coaster career and a guy by the name of Lt. Robert Wilson R.M. There are roughly 31 family trees for Robert Wilson on Ancestry, the majority of them sayin...

  This post may be terribly confusing to younger people, so I'll approach this difficult subject in baby steps. There was a time in history before drones were invented. Its a long time ago now but few and far between were your lovely aerial views of lighthouses, islands, villages etc that you see today on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram (none of which were around either) Prior to this, aerial views were normally obtained from either aeroplanes or helicopters or simply by climbing up to some higher ground like a mountain, which naturally limited your choice of view. Even before aeroplanes and helicopters, but not before mountains, man looked up to the skies and dreamed of soaring in the blue firmament like pterodactyls. Then somebody had the bright idea of filling up a big bag with hot air, attaching a basket to the bottom of it and the science of aviation was begun. It is generally acknowledged that the first balloon ascent was made in Paris in 1783 by Pilatre de Rosier, who sou...

Two views of Hook Head - white with two black stripes (post 1933) and white with three red stripes (1859 - 1933) The change caused a riot on the catwalk In a recent post, I focussed on the confusion that could occur by careless naming of our coastal light stations - St. John's Point could get mixed up with St. John's Point, for example, or Blackrock with Blackrock. Hard to see how, but apparently it happened. Quite coincidentally, Andrew Doherty in his always-compelling Tides and Tales blog, recently described the sinking of the sailing ship Columbus off Hook Head in 1852. The reasons for the tragedy were many and varied but one of them sparked my attention. At 5 p.m. I made the Hook lighthouse   and, from being unable to see the land, it had the appearance of Tusker. At half-past 5 saw the light and found that we were embayed.  Not being a seafaring chap, by any stretch of the imagination, I wondered how often it happened that you could see a lighthouse in daylight hours b...