Wicklow Head lighthouse provides a room with a view, 109 steps from bottom to top – The Irish Times
Exchanging inner-city Dublin for accommodation in a lighthouse, strange to say, I experienced the first night of sleep in months that was not interrupted by seagulls.
This is in part because the old Wicklow Head lighthouse, a six-storey octagonal structure built in 1781, is at the back of a headland, somewhat removed from the sea.
It also helped that the predominant birds here are terns, smaller and less noisy than the herring gulls and other raucous scavengers now part of the dawn chorus in the city.
Then there are the lighthouse’s two-metre-thick walls, which, at least when there isn’t a storm blowing on the head, cut out most of whatever noise there is outside.
The profound sleep you enjoy in such a place is not disturbed by creaky floorboards either. Despite the building’s great age, the floors are new and the spiral stairs, winding around the rooms, are metal.
If you had small children running up and down all night, they might well make a racket. But there are 109 steps from bottom to top, so that would soon sap the energy of even the most manic.
It is a long time since the old lighthouse served the purpose it was built for. It was already superfluous by the early 19th century.
Then, struck by lightning and burned out in 1836, it was thereafter retained only as a daytime landmark for sailors. It had long been an empty shell when inherited by the Irish Landmark Trust in 1996.
Restored for tourist use, it somewhat inverts the plan of a normal house, insofar as a six-storey house can be in any way normal.
The front door is conventional enough. So is the reception hall on the ground floor. On the storeys above that, however, are the first of two double-bedrooms, then a bathroom, then the other bedroom.
The tower tapers slightly as it rises. But on the fifth floor, there is still enough space for a cosy, comfortable livingroom, with a small three-piece suite.
And on the sixth floor is a fully-functioning kitchen, crowned by a tall, empty ceiling space where, more than two centuries ago, there used to be 20 tallow candles reflected out to sea by mirrors.
Wicklow Head was littered with lighthouses once. The remaining octagonal tower used to be one of an identical pair, designed to distinguish this part of the east coast from Hook Head to the south and Howth Head to the north.
Both were soon deemed to be badly placed and often obscured by mist and fog. A smaller one was added nearer the sea, where it remains today. And the lighthouse still in operation, now automated, was opened at the front of the headland in 1818.
That’s much less impressive than the one we stayed in, but our photographer Nick, who lives 25km north of here, can attest to its effectiveness. The “occulted” light pulses through his window every night.
Wicklow is not one of Ireland’s more celebrated coastlands, but the four-side views from the octagonal tower are spectacular. So are the walks around the head.
Nearby is a zigzagging path through furze and heather that takes you down to the small, densely-pebbled Glen Beach, home to a colony of grey seals.
The beach is off-limits in and around breeding season, August to April. But on the last weekend in July, as we crunched across the stones, a seal periscoped out of the water a few times to have a look at us.
And in breeding season, there are vantage points on the hill where you can safely return the compliment and see a whole pod of seals basking below.
The trail is ablaze with colourful plants, including the lovely Sea Pink, the blue Sheep’s Bit, and the yellow Tormentil. Terns aside, the cliffs also teem with other birds: kittiwakes, fulmar, shag and guillemot. Peregrine falcons may make an appearance too.
On the trail towards Limekiln Bay, also nearby, there are the ruins of a small church which local tradition dates back to the time of the penal laws. There is a holy well too, Tobar Bride, from which it’s said that fishermen once drank to invoke divine protection at sea.
The old lighthouse at Wicklow Head was the first property taken over by the Irish Landmark Trust – a charity that restores architecturally important buildings and gives them new life as visitor accommodation – and remains perhaps the jewel in the trust’s crown.
It’s not cheap to stay in: the minimum two nights costs “from €745″. But the guest book is full of ecstatic reviews from people the world over for whom living in a lighthouse, however briefly, was a fantasy come true.
As witnessed by at least one video, posted in response to my tweeted pictures, staying there during a storm adds a whole other level to the experience.
Returning to the question of sleep, light is of course a two-way thing in a lighthouse. It no longer shines out from the octagonal tower, except for the soft glow of household bulbs.
But the incoming dawn light reaches occupants earlier than in most houses. Fortunately, there are hand-fixed blinds to exclude it, although climbing into my deeply recessed, landside window to open and close them required more than usual athleticism.
