A tour of Wales’ lighthouses
A fascinating new book on the lighthouses of Wales combines human stories with design and historical information, writes Jenny White
WALES’ coastline has more than 30 lighthouses, and a new book by Anglesey resident Warren Kovach details them in fascinating detail, highlighting everything from the design and equipment of these landmark buildings to the human stories behind them – their builders, the lighthouse keepers and their families.
Kovach has a long-running fascination with Welsh history, ever since settling in Wales in the 1980s. A botanist and palaeontologist by training, he is also a developer of scienti c software. His book has grown from what started as a pastime.
“I’ve always interested in history, and just started doing more and more about the history side of things,” he says.
“For about that past 10 years or so, I’ve been really focusing on local history. It started o as one page on my business website back in 1992 or 95, and then Amberley Publishing spotted my website and approached me then about writing books.”
Lighthouses of Wales began with research he undertook as a tour guide at South Stack on Anglesey.
“I had already learned quite a bit about how lighthouses work so that when I was at South Stack, I would be able to tell people more about the lighthouses there,” he says.
“en I spent about two years really travelling up and down Wales to visit all the di erent lighthouses. I made two or three trips down to south Wales to visit lighthouses there, and I was familiar with a lot of them here up in north Wales, but I was doing a bit more travelling around and just talking to people. I joined the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, which is an organisation of people who are interested in lighthouses.”
“I’m intrigued by what the families would have been like and there were a few tales that I’ve told about lighthouse keepers and so on, and what families were like,” he adds. “I’ve got one story, which is a sort of case history for which I was able to track down the identities of some people in an old picture and look into what those people did, and where the children wound up. ere’s also the occasional ghost story in the book.”
e book also delves into the construction and design of the lighthouses.
“ey’re built on a similar pattern, most of all the just round towers,” he says. “ree of them are square towers: on Bardsey, Holyhead and out of Amberport. e Mumbles lighthouse in Mumbles
near Swansea is interesting because it was built fairly early on, in two stages, so you have a wide bit at the bottom, and then a narrower tower in the middle, up to the top, and it’s octagonal too, rather than round.”
I’m intrigued by what the families would have been like and there were a few tales that I’ve told about lighthouse keepers and so on, and what families were like
is results in a very distinctive lighthouse – a Swansea landmark whose shape reveals something about its history.
“e reason they built it in two stages is because the original lighthouse had coal braziers on it, rather than gas lights,” says Kovach. “e early lighthouses would have all been coal, and so they had two coal res on it, one on top, and then one down at the lower level halfway down the lighthouse.”
His research revealed other interesting points about the construction and the history of the lighthouses.
“e one at West Usk near Newport is really unusual,” he says. “It has the lighthouse sticking up out of the middle of a drum shaped accommodation building, so you’ve got the lighthouse and the lantern up on top, but encircling it is the actual accommodation for the keepers.
“e two sets of apartments are mirror images of each other, one on one side and one on the other, making it quite a curious looking one.”
e book is ideal inspiration for journeys around Wales, or a way to get to know your local landmarks better.
“A lot of books about lighthouses will just list the lighthouses and tell little stories about each, but what I’ve tried to do with this book is to teach people about what lighthouses are like, how they’re built, how they work, how the di erent lamps work, things like that,” says Kovach.
“is book really focuses on these topics while also weaving in the stories of the Welsh lighthouses as examples. I tried to make it more of a readable thing that you could really get into and follow along the whole story of how lighthouses work, and learn a lot about the individual lighthouses along the way.”
And with his passion for local history still burning strong, Kovach is now working on his next book, also to be published by Amberley publishing, which will delve into the history of churches on Anglesey – a place that has many points of historical interest, from standing stones to its many windmills.
“I’m just starting on the churches book, as I have a big section of my website about churches.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while,” he says.