Valentia And The Skellig Islands
A Remote corner of Ireland and Centre of World Communications
Valentia Island in County Kerry as the nearest point of land to America became the terminus of the first transatlantic cable in 1865.
By 1916 Valentia had better communication with New York than Dublin had with London. It was that communication that led to the Irish Republican movement in New York learning of the Easter Rising in Dublin before the Government in London. One of the cable operators Tim Ring, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, sent word in a coded message to a leading republican in America. It simply read 'Mother operated on successfully today'. The authorities identified Ring as the sender and he was interred on the British Mainland and not allowed back to Valentia until 1922. A report by the British Commander-in-Chief, General Maxwell, described him as 'a disloyal and dangerous man'. Nowadays he’s regarded as a hero by the islanders and his grandson had some T shirts printed bearing Tim Ring’s photograph and the caption 'a disloyal and dangerous man' underneath.
At its peak the cable company employed 200 men who lived, with their families, in purpose built houses attached to the station. That was a time of great prosperity, but with modern equipment, automation and the installation of new transatlantic telephone cables at Oban, in Scotland, staff declined to 25 and the doors were finally closed in 1965. Des Lavelle was one of the last employees. Like many of the islanders he now makes his living from tourism. Fascinated since childhood by the Skellig Islands, two barren fingers of rock in the Atlantic, where his father had been a lighthouse keeper he began to take visitors out to appreciate the wildlife - the seabirds, the gannets, puffins, razorbills and guillemots of Skellig and Skellig Michael.
That led to a deeper interest in the place and its history. His research led him to ancient manuscripts like the Annals of Innishfallen, currently in the Bodlean Library at Oxford. ‘They were the journals or diaries of the time with sometimes only one entry in a year. So you could be sure if it was about Skellig Michael then it was a very important place.' In the late 1960s by way of advertising his boat trips, Des produced a small brochure, typed on an old beat up typewriter. ‘Somehow it just got bigger and bigger.' So when he heard of a publisher who was producing a series of books on islands, he sent him the manuscript. The book on the Skelligs was published in 1976 with Des's photographs in black and white. Now in full colour the latest edition is a local best seller.
It’s remote and inhospitable with hardly a patch of level ground but the remains found on the Skelligs tell a powerful story of human endeavour and persistence. In the 6th century a group of monks landed there in small leather boats, built a landing stage and carved a staircase out of solid rock to set up home on the top. The community remained for six hundred years building beehive huts, walls, terraces and innumerable Celtic crosses from the abundant local stone. They dragged and carried huge lumps of stone, weighing anything up to 800 pounds, across the island for use as steps, lintels and walls. Finally a change in church politics, coupled with deteriorating weather, forced them to move to the mainland about the 12th century. There were many monastic communities living on remote islands around Ireland at that time but none was as inaccessible as Skellig. As a result it has remained intact through the centuries. Today, visitors can still climb the 544 steps to the summit and marvel at some of the best preserved examples of Early Christian architecture in the world.
