Lighthouse Society, Kitsap County Parks and the Friends of Point No Point, the historic lighthouse Keeper's home has opened as a vacation rental.Ĭome and experience the century old history this unique property has to offer by spending time as keepers of the light. The Point No Point Lighthouse, built in 1879, is considered to be the oldest lighthouse on Puget Sound. It’s showing as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival, from 17-21 June in Firkin Crane.Humpback whales seen at Point No Point Oct 2015
Journalist turned sheep farmer stuck in the middle with ewe Irene asked me would I come to the premiere and I said: ‘Try stopping me.’īrewing beer on a farm in the foothills of Croagh Patrick Seamus O’Rourke is playing the lightkeeper. It’s showing as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival, from 17-21 June in Firkin Crane. What she produced was just absolutely awesome. I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it. When she left, I didn’t hear any more until she sent me back the first draft of the play she had written. I talked to her for a long time in the kitchen in the house she was staying at in the Galley – our old home. Anyway, I brought her up into the lighthouse. To be honest, I thought, this isn’t going to go anywhere. There’s holiday accommodation at the Galley that I manage for the Irish Landmark Trust. She arrived at the Galley with her husband Denis. She’s a playwright and wanted to write a play about a lightkeeper. I released my memoir called The Lightkeeper about 10 years ago.Īwhile back Irene Kelleher contacted me. With that time you can just sit and look at nature. Hermetic is the way I describe it as well. I liked the time it afforded for me to be creative with my hands and to read profusely. But yet, when it came to being a lightkeeper, after five years he found he could not handle the isolation. My twin brother and I were and are inseparable. That’s a strange thing because not everybody is comfortable on their own. If you liked the life, which I absolutely passionately loved, going out to a rock for a month was another holiday as well. It was beautiful in that you spent a month on the rock and then you had a paid holiday for another month. It wound up that we were coming back for a month then. In that time, you had to manage all your own cooking and wash your clothes, generally look after yourself. Every time you went out to a rock, you were there for 28 days. I was stationed out on the rock a few times. That parish lies along the coastline between Clon and Ross. It’s in the parish of Ardfield and Rathbarry. It’s between Rosscarbery and Clonakilty in Co Cork. She retired in 1997 and I took over then. An attendant lightkeeper is in charge of the maintenance of the lighthouse. But again, there was that attachment to working on the sea.Īt Galley Head, where my father had been last posted, my mother became the attendant lightkeeper. It was the complete opposite to what I had been doing, which was quite sedentary. But for some reason I absolutely loved it. It was physical and extremely strenuous work.
When I was made redundant, I bought a fishing trawler and I became a fisherman for 10 years. I very quickly accepted life was moving on and I was also moving on. However, you cannot live in sadness and you cannot live in the past.
It was the end of an era and I can only say I was saddened by it. Once electricity came in, the lights were electrified and with further technology they were completely automated. From there I was transferred to the Fastnet, the Old Head of Kinsale and to Mizen. After my training I was appointed as an assistant keeper to Bull Rock, which is off Dursey Island. I remained in the Irish Lights for 21 years. By then you were building a huge amount of experience with the different apparatuses, the different fog signals, etc. From there we were sent all around the coast to different lighthouses to do relief work. We did four years of on-the-job training at the Baily Lighthouse in Dublin. At the age of 19 I had done the entrance exam, medical exam and swimming exam, so I headed off up to Dublin and passed the interview. After that, all we wanted to do was be lightkeepers. My father, God rest him, brought myself and my twin brother out to Ballycotton. When we were up in Dundalk and in Ballycotton, my father was out on the rock.įrom when I was a little child, being a lightkeeper was all I wanted to do. You’ve two kinds of lighthouses, one is on a rock out in the water and the other is on a headland or peninsula. Then we headed up to Dundalk to a place called Mine Head near Dungarvan and then back to the Galley in 1965. That was where I started going to school at the age of four. From there we moved to Galley Head and Ballycotton. In the Irish Lights (the lighthouse authority) we moved around. My mother then was the daughter of a lightkeeper. My father was a lightkeeper and his father before him was a captain of the lightships.
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