Islands of Ireland: Leading light of Clew Bay
Inishgort lighthouse, Co Mayo. Picture: Dan MacCarthy
The air is charged with ozone. The blaze of light reflects off the sea like the glare from a thousand shields. There are arched humps of islands everywhere you look. This journey to Inishgort, Co Mayo, is almost Homeric in its scope. It truly feels like a voyage to the unknown.
This is a Clew Bay island with a difference. While many of the islands in this amazing bay are partially submerged drumlins, others have crazy Dadaist shapes as if designed by surrealist maestro Juan Míro.
Inishgort has its conventional drumlin shape too, with a small farmhouse sheltering on the far side from the sometimes ferocious weather. The farmhouse is occasionally rented but is not occupied all year round.
Inishgort also has its exotic side, with curlicues of pebble beach decorating a tenuous isthmus. Across this tethering is fixed a formidable lighthouse, now unmanned. While its light, with a range of 10 nautical miles, still guides shipping towards Rosmoney Pier or Westport, its expertise is now governed by a computer chip rather than a human hand.
The eastern part of the island is divided into several fine fields, and cattle and sheep are brought over by boat to graze. Apart from the occasional kayaker or lighthouse maintenance crew, they have this idyll to themselves.
Inishgort has an even more tenuous link to its near neighbour, Islandmore, with an underwater bar.
The population on Inishgort, also recorded as Inish Gurt and Inish Guirt, peaked at 32 people in 1841, but by the 1911 census just three houses, comprising seven adults, had returned forms. The population gradually dwindled from the 1960s until just one person was left by 2006.
For many years the island men provided pilots to guide boats up to Westport. Payment was often a bone of contention, as in this exchange in 1913 between the secretary and the chairman of the harbour office.
Secretary: "I think you would require to make some regulations about the pilots as there is a complaint that Jeffers wants to collar all the money and the other men complain of that." Chairman: "They have a right to complain." Secretary: "I daresay when the commissioner comes around he will make some regulations about the pilot boat.”
Hard to believe, but the magnificent lighthouse tower was built in 1806. The two-storey lighthouse-keeper's house was constructed in 1827. The light was converted to solar power in 2000. Nobody has lived there in several decades, but the building looks so well maintained it's as if someone has just nipped over to the mainland for a bottle of milk.
Inishgort was also the home of the former postmaster of Clew Bay, Sean Jeffers, until his death in 2006. For 30 years he delivered the post to the few populated islands in the bay.
His antecedents were steeped in everything to do with lighthouses and, in fact, his grandfather was the keeper there. It was an association that lasted over 150 years, according to the .
Over the years, several newspapers interviewed Sean about life on one of the most westerly of the Clew Bay islands. In 1998 he told the : “I don’t have time to be lonely. I don’t drink or smoke, so I don’t miss going to the pub.”
As for bringing his animals to the mainland for sale, he would swim them across to the mainland.
“Some people use rafts, but I put a halter on them, tie them on to the boat and they swim as far as the island of Cullenbeg. They can be driven from there to the mainland. None of them have drowned yet, although some have swallowed more salt water than was good for them,” he told the .
The islands of Inishgort and Inishlyre were connected to the national electricity grid in 2001 so life improved for Sean. “I will now have heating at the touch of a switch,” he said.
People no longer reside on Inishgort — Sean passed away in 2006 — but the redoubtable lighthouse, which many times faced into the challenging storms that besieged the island, still stands.
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