Ireland’s Guiding Lights

The Irish Lights were for many years seen as a benign organisation, just going about their duties of providing aids to marine navigation. As the lightkeepers were made redundant and are fading away, a new interest has emerged about their hermetic and sometimes dangerous lifestyle. This has been awakened by the new documentaries which have just been shown on RTE. These sets of episodes expose the entire work regime carried out by The Irish Lights over the years.

Lighthouses were built in the most remote, beautiful and rugged areas of our coastline and were all painted annually for day marks and also for maintenance. This meant for anyone looking on, that they could see a most stunning edifice painted up and looking beautiful out at the point of a rough headland or out at sea on top of a forlorn rock, such as Tuskar rock off the Wexford coast, or Inish Tearaght off the Blasket Islands, even Fastnet off Cape Clear.

All of this stirred up the interest in one of Ireland's leading aerial photographers, Denis Horgan, who, with camera in hand, went and photographed these iconic structures from the air. To accompany these exquisite photographs, Dennis, knowing that there is a story attached to all of them, has asked me to write up an historical story pertaining to each of these lighthouses. Being a third generation lightkeeper and having grown up at these lighthouses, it is my pleasure to be involved, sharing my knowledge and experience with this project.

Each photograph will fill a page and be accompanied with an historical story on the opposite page.Putting these photos and stories together will compliment each other and make for an exciting, attractive, colourful and captivating book.