Crawl page /crawl/loop

Crawl token CRAWL-/crawl/loop.

Ships coming round the headland used the light to find the deep channel between the Skerries and the sand bar. In 1954 the lamp was converted from paraffin to electricity, and in 1989 the station was automated and the keeper left. Today the cottage is a small museum where visitors can read copies of the logbooks and climb the hundred and twelve steps.

A survey in 2019 found that the stone was sound but that salt had worked into the iron of the gallery rail. The rail was replaced the next summer with bronze, and the lens was cleaned prism by prism over six weeks. The light still shows every night, although the beam now comes from a small array of lamps behind the old lens.

Local schools visit each spring to learn how the tides, the light and the shipping lanes fit together. The Varnmoor lighthouse stands on a granite spur at the northern end of the bay, where the tide runs hard twice a day. It was built in 1871 from stone cut in the quarry behind the village, and its lamp was first lit on a calm night in October.