A gale night in a lighthouse keeper's cottage
WEST OF IRELAND · 52.6°N 9.9°W · 02:15 · Wind 52 mph · Gale, driving rain (the scene's setting, not live weather)
Sound on. Best with headphones, phone face down.
Field notes Loop Head, County Clare, Ireland
The last keepers
No Irish lighthouse has keepers now. Loop Head's left at the end of January 1991, and the last of all were withdrawn from Baily on 24 March 1997. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head; Commissioners of Irish Lights, Baily)
Storm-petrels
About 38% of all the world's European storm-petrels breed in Ireland, and the latest census found their numbers stable. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Kittiwakes and puffins
The same census found kittiwakes and puffins in decline. Kittiwakes are down 42% since the count before. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Four flashes every twenty seconds
Loop Head's light shows four white flashes every 20 seconds from 84 metres above high water, and reaches 23 nautical miles. The first light here, in about 1670, was a coal fire in a brazier on a stone cottage. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
Ophelia's waves
When Storm Ophelia hit in October 2017, the M5 weather buoy measured a single wave of 17.81 metres. The top gust, 191 km/h, was caught at Fastnet lighthouse by instruments almost 70 metres up. (The Irish Times, 18 October 2017)
The fog signal went quiet
Loop Head's explosive fog signal was stopped for good in 1972. Today the light is looked after by an attendant and watched by telemetry from Irish Lights in Dún Laoghaire. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
A post office under the tower
From 1969 to 1972 the post office at Blacksod was in the room under the lighthouse tower, as far as its writer knows the only time an Irish lighthouse held one. In 1865 two firms bid exactly £340 for its light, so the Board drew lots. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Blacksod)
Sleep timer ended. Goodnight.
You're in an old iron bed under a patchwork quilt, in the whitewashed back room of a keeper's cottage on the west coast of Ireland. It's a quarter past two in the morning and an Atlantic gale is throwing rain at the little deep-set window. Through it the lighthouse stands on its rock with the sea going white below, and the beam swings out over the water and comes round again. The oil lamp is lit beside the tide table, the kettle sits on the stove, and a jumper hangs on the chair.
What a night at the light is like
The scene is set near Loop Head in County Clare. Loop Head is one of 70 lighthouses run by the Commissioners of Irish Lights, and keepers once lived right beside it. By 1811 its keeper was living in an adjoining cottage rather than in the tower (Irish Lights, Loop Head).
Cottage life came with few comforts. At Blacksod in Mayo, the keeper's household got an earth closet in the back yard in 1909, and proper bathrooms and running water didn't arrive until the mid-1960s (Irish Lights, Blacksod). Nobody keeps the lights now. Irish Lights says many of its lighthouses and buoys run on renewable energy and send weather and other environmental readings back to it (Irish Lights). On a night like this the light looks after itself.
Atlantic winters
Met Éireann describes Irish winters as cool and windy. In December and January depressions move rapidly eastward, bringing strong winds and plenty of rain, and the Atlantic is the biggest influence on the whole climate (Met Éireann, Climate of Ireland).
The 52 mph wind on this scene's card is about 45 knots, using the Met Office's 1.15 to turn knots into miles an hour. Its Beaufort scale puts that at force 9, a strong gale of 41 to 47 knots, one step up from a gale (Met Office Beaufort scale). That's ordinary for the west coast in winter. Storm Ophelia, in October 2017, was far worse.
Field notes
The real place behind the scene: who lives there, the wildlife they share it with, and a few things worth knowing. The same notes open from Field notes in the player.
The last keepers
No Irish lighthouse has keepers now. Loop Head's left at the end of January 1991, and the last of all were withdrawn from Baily on 24 March 1997. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head; Commissioners of Irish Lights, Baily)
Storm-petrels
About 38% of all the world's European storm-petrels breed in Ireland, and the latest census found their numbers stable. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Kittiwakes and puffins
The same census found kittiwakes and puffins in decline. Kittiwakes are down 42% since the count before. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Four flashes every twenty seconds
Loop Head's light shows four white flashes every 20 seconds from 84 metres above high water, and reaches 23 nautical miles. The first light here, in about 1670, was a coal fire in a brazier on a stone cottage. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
Ophelia's waves
When Storm Ophelia hit in October 2017, the M5 weather buoy measured a single wave of 17.81 metres. The top gust, 191 km/h, was caught at Fastnet lighthouse by instruments almost 70 metres up. (The Irish Times, 18 October 2017)
The fog signal went quiet
Loop Head's explosive fog signal was stopped for good in 1972. Today the light is looked after by an attendant and watched by telemetry from Irish Lights in Dún Laoghaire. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
A post office under the tower
From 1969 to 1972 the post office at Blacksod was in the room under the lighthouse tower, as far as its writer knows the only time an Irish lighthouse held one. In 1865 two firms bid exactly £340 for its light, so the Board drew lots. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Blacksod)
Somewhere else tonight
For an Atlantic storm out at sea, there's an officer's cabin on a container ship. Further east, a crew cabin on a North Sea oil platform rides out a gale. Every place is on the map.