‘Ireland’s Guiding Lights’ – Book

Looking for a special way to embrace the festive spirit this year? Check out Ireland’s Guiding Lights, by Dennis Horgan, an exquisite look at the lighthouses of Ireland.

A hermetic and often dangerous job, the life of a lightkeeper was seldom easy. Lighthouses were built in the most remote, beautiful and rugged areas of our coastline, they were all painted annually for distinctive 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, like 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 photographs, Dennis, knowing that there is a story attached to all of them, asked third-generation lightkeeper Gerald Butler, to write up an historical story pertaining to each of these lighthouses.