The Harbour at Dunmore East

The harbour at Dunmore East was not always a fishing port. For a brief, ambitious decade in the early 1800s it was a packet station — the Irish terminus of the mail boat from Milford Haven in Wales. The engineer was Alexander Nimmo, but the original harbour design is associated with a string of engineering names that include the Brunel family by reputation if not always by direct hand.

The packet station years

From 1824 the British Post Office ran a packet boat service from Milford Haven to Dunmore East, carrying mail and passengers between Britain and the south of Ireland. The harbour, completed under the direction of Alexander Nimmo, was substantial — a stone-built haven with a pier curving out to break the swell from the open Celtic Sea. Within a decade the service moved north to Waterford City proper and the packet station closed.

What's left of that era

Walk the pier at Dunmore East today and you're walking the same dressed-stone construction that took the early mail boats. The harbour wall is one of the great pieces of early-19th-century engineering on the south Irish coast — unchanged in its essentials for two hundred years.

The fishing port that came after

When the mail boat moved on, Dunmore East found its second life. The harbour proved ideal for the inshore fishing fleet. Herring, mackerel, prawns, lobster, brown crab — the fleet has worked these grounds for the best part of two centuries. The lifeboat station has been at the harbour since the 1850s; the current Severn-class boat 'Elizabeth and Ronald' has been on station since the early 2000s.

Watching the harbour work

The harbour is at its best in the late afternoon when the fleet returns. Stand on the upper road above the lifeboat slip and you'll see the boats come in, the catch land and the gulls work the offcuts. After half an hour you'll want a hot meal — that's where The Spinnaker Bar comes in. Ring ahead, especially for a Friday or Sunday.