The Hook peninsula , Wexford

For the next week I will be  staying in the Wexford/Wicklow area researching the Levingston ancestors, who descended from the McDougall clan of Scotland. 

Today I drove out around the beautiful Hook peninsula.  Ireland is so physically gorgeous and the history so interesting! I can't help but be in awe of the skill and expertise, not to mention the determination and perseverance, that went into the building of structures like Tintern Abbey and the Hook lighthouse in the Middle Ages. And that they were treasured and maintained by generations since..

This medieval lighthouse built in the early thirteenth century to help sailing ships safely navigate the dangerous Wexford coastline, is one of the oldest operational lighthouses in the world. It is 4 stories high and the walls are up to 4 metres thick. It's believed that before it was built the monks of St Dubhan had kept a fire burning to warn ships. The lighthouse was commissioned by William Marshall, Lord of Leinster. (More about him later).



The Hook lighthouse


View from the lighthouse

The medieval entrance still exists


I was a bit confused to discover that there was another Tintern Abbey in Ireland. I wrote about the original one in Wales in a blogpost  back on August 24. There is an interesting story how there came to be a second one. When William Marshal (described as the greatest knight who ever lived) was sailing to Ireland on his first visit after he'd become Lord of Leinster, his ship was struck by a severe storm and was close to sinking. William did a deal with God that if he made it safely to shore he would found an abbey wherever he landed. He managed to wash up on the shore at Bannow Bay in County Wexford and granted 3,500 hectares, (which he'd got through his marriage to Strongbow's daughter Isobel), to the Cistercian order to establish an abbey there. He brought monks from the Tintern abbey in Wales and they named the new abbey after their original home. The abbey is surrounded by a large woodland forest which still contains many of the wild fruits, nuts, herbs and fungi that the monks depended on for their survival.







William Marshal then went on to build the lighthouse to warn fellow seafarers of the treacherous sea surrounding the Hook.

Just me and my shadow were on the beach at Baginbun today near where William Marshal made it to shore after his ship foundered over 800 years ago.


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