Stories and Memories

As the Port of Belfast became busier over the centuries, the Harbour needed numerous navigational lights to guide ships in and out, including lighthouses located across Queens Island (now Titanic Quarter). On the spot where the Great Light now sits there was once a lighthouse and battery, as the map from 1860 shows.

In the 1840s a lighthouse was constructed on the Holywood Bank of the Harbour, using a new engineering technique of screw piling, developed by a Belfast man Alexander Mitchell. Despite having lost his sight at the age of twenty-two Mitchell patented a wrought and cast-iron screw pile technique that allowed lighthouses to be constructed on sandbanks and shoals. The Holywood Bank lighthouse served Belfast Harbour until 1891 when it was demolished to make way for the extension of the Victoria Chanel. Lighthouses using Mitchell’s technique were constructed across England and Ireland, including one erected in Dundalk Bay in 1848, which is still in use and maintained by the Commissioners of Irish Lights today.

In later years there were navigational lights all across the Harbour, including the East Twin Light, a manned lighthouse, which was located further down Queens Island. This light was looked after by a keeper, his wife and family for forty four years until it was replaced by the new dry dock in the shipyard in the 1960s. The area is still known locally as McKibbin’s Point after the lighthouse keeper Samuel McKibbin. He raised his family in the house attached to the light, and his wife helped him keep the light burning in all weathers.