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LIFE OF CHARLES HALIDAT. CXV
advanced only as far as " Green Patch" (marked on Perry's
map), by reason of the depth of the water, which hindered
the piling from being carried to Cock (or Cockle) lake, as
intended. On 17th of July, 1731, the Ballast Board sugges- Pigeon-houted,
that instead of piles or frames, a double dry stone wall ro
should be built and filled in between with gravel. 1 And
such is the origin and history of what is now known as the
Pigeon-house-road.
It remains to give some short account of the history of
the Pigeon-house itself, of the Lighthouse, and the long
low wall of granite from the Lighthouse to the Pigeon-
house, nearly three miles in length, through
the sea. The
piling of the South Bull being completed about 1735, the
Ballast Board placed a floating light near the eastern or
seaward end of the piles in that year. 2 On 23rd of February,
1 744, there appears a notice from the Ballast Board in the
Dublin Chronicle, for proposals to build a lighthouse at
the end of the piles.
But it will be seen by Rocque's map,
that in 1756 (the date of the map) the light ship was still
there, and no lighthouse built. It was in June, 1761, that
the Poolbeg Lighthouse, of cut granite, was begun, and at
the same time the building of the long stone wall, called the
Lighthouse wall.3
The progress of the wall was at first slow, for it appears Lighthouse
by a plan engraved on copper, attached to a waU>
proposal to
Parliament, dated 5th July, 1784, concerning the erecting
of a new bridge at Ringsend, that the length of wall was
only like a short spur attached to the Lighthouse
at that
date. But on 10th January, 1789, there appears the following
notice in the Dublin Chronicle :
" Tlie wall to the Lighthouse is now in such a state of forward-
ness, that it is expected the whole will be completed in eighteen
months."*
1
Appendix, p. 237. Ibid. p. 238.
1
Ibid.
p. 238, n. Ibid.