Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Haulbowline light, Carlingfored Lough c.1906 I came across the following poem in an old Beam magazine and, of course, I had to follow it through to its logical conclusion.   Okay, just to get the housekeeping out of the way, a 'penion' is a large marine whelk. It is unlikely that the keeper is envying the birds their large marine whelks, so it is probably a typo for pinion -  a wing or feather. Jestic on the other hand has me stumped. It may be another word for 'majesty' - majestic, jestic - but then, for all I know, it could be a slang, lightkeeper term for ringworm powder and the barque is bring a supply of this over the bar. So, who was William Redmond and did he ever serve at Haulbowline? Well, William was the son of Hugh Redmond, who became a keeper as far back as 1818. Hugh served on the Skelligs and lost a son over the cliffs there. In 1839, he was serving on the South Maidens when his daughter, Mary Anne eloped with the son of a keeper on the North Maidens. Hugh...

  James and Billy Black at Eeragh The problem with lighthouses was that the Halpins and the Douglasses and the Stevensons always used to insist on building them next to the sea. Not in Athlone or the Galtees but right on the seafront, where salt-laden gales would scour off the paint in a matter of hours. Being daymarks as well as guiding lights at night, they naturally needed painting and there was a dedicated team at Irish Lights who would go around the country in pairs and do just that. I can find no articles about Irish lighthouse painters on the net (except, perhaps, the famous one about Brendan Behan at St. John's Point, county Down) and it is definitely an area that should be gone into. I bet the painters had some great stories to tell. I'd never really thought properly about the painters. Must have been some job swinging about at the top of a 100 foot tower in the biting wind. I'd say they developed some muscles in their forearms too. I paint a ceiling and have to li...

(Lee Maginnis, lighthouse enthusiast (providing they are built of certain materials and are of a certain size)  from county Down, sea-swimmer, athlete, journalist and goatherd, writes this post on one of the Irish lighthouses that never gets a look in - Ardglass) It all began with an advert asking for volunteers to work at Spurn Lighthouse.  I thought immediately of the Goulding family in Ireland.  Mrs. Goulding might fancy a break.  Spurn being in Yorkshire, she could send her lighthouse historian husband Peter away for his treat, while enjoying a fortnight's respite at home herself. Peter, in turn, after the suggestion, had an idea of his own.  I should take over care of Ardglass Lighthouse as it was in need of attention. Now Peter knows very well that I am a fan of big lighthouses that are made of granite.  I googled the lighthouse and was rewarded with a fantastic view taken from a helicopter, or more likely, a drone.  It looked white, and big, pai...

  It is nine years since I visited Greenore at the entrance to Carlingford Lough. There has been a lighthouse here since 1830, erected after representations from the Newry Chamber of Commerce. Not only was it an important harbour light in its day but, in conjunction with the much more famous and statuesque Haulbowline light in the centre of the lough, it also helped the wary mariner clear lurking dangers at the entrance to the lough.   The light really came into its own with the building of the Dundalk and Greenore Railway in the 1860s. Shipping routes to Heysham and Fleetwood brought prosperity to the area and a large hotel was built to accommodate visitors.  Unfortunately, the partition of the country saw the port go into decline as northern travellers to Britain often didn't fancy journeying to the Free State to avail of shorter shipping routes. The lighthouse was discontinued in 1986 and has sat disconsolately behind a wall and a locked gate ever since. I comment...

  Wicklow Pierhead lighthouse pre-Independence, with hat and feathers. Some really good news this week from the east coast of Ireland regarding two of our lights. First off, there's the Wicklow pierhead light which I wrote about here Basically a storm in January 1976 lifted off the beautiful old copper dome and weather vane from the lantern room and deposited them in the harbour. It was deemed uneconomical to repair them and so a makeshift cap was made by a very decent local tradesman to allow the light to continue. Plenty of photographs on the Wicklow Maritime Facebook page! Then, around a year ago, there were rumblings that the Port Authority were looking at returning the dome to its rightful position.  Yeah, right! But then, this weekend just gone, it all came to pass! The dome was repaired by Arklow Marine Services  and was reunited in Arklow with the lantern room. On Sunday, it was returned to the pier and was hoisted into place early on Monday morning. Looks great! ...

  My thanks to my brother-in-law Aido who, combining his love for Donegal with his keen interest in islands, took in the formerly inhabited island of Gola on a recent trip up that way, and took photos of a couple of interesting beacons there. Beacons about which I can find practically nothing online, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Gola incidentally is an island off the north-west coast of Donegal between Arranmore and Bloody Foreland. The unusual beauty at the top of the page is roughly eight feet (2.6 meters) tall and is situated in the pier area on the eastern, mainland-facing side of the island. It appears to have maybe once held a hurricane lamp or something to guide in boats at night but now the bulb on top works on solar power. (Of course, it might also have held a statue of the Virgin Mary!) On the south east part of the island there are two beacons which act as leading lights for the boats coming from Bunbeg. The front beacon sits on a rock on the shoreline and t...

  What I believe is the old lighthouse at the end of the old Ballygeary pier which served Rosslare Harbour before the current pier came into existence in 1906 On a recent trip to see the Maritime Exhibition in Kilmore Quay (great stuff, lads and lasses) I decided to nip over to Tagoat to see if I could find any evidence of a lost lighthouse on the cliff top. I've been banging on about this lighthouse and its brother on Ballygeary pier a couple of times (see here and here ) and not had much response, save to say that, if there had been a lighthouse at Hill of Sea, it would have fallen victim to coastal erosion years ago, which is fair enough. Suffice to say that, unsurprisingly, there was no evidence of a lighthouse at Hill of Sea. Of course, I may have been looking in the wrong location. There is some discrepancy in the O.S. maps at the period in question, which doesn't help. The 25 inch map shows it quite definitely: So, head from the pub and graveyard on the main road toward...