Any visitor to Brow Head, a headland jutting into the North Atlantic in the
extreme southwest of Ireland, will immediately understand why the great man
 chose this place as the site of his western-most European wireless station
 in 1901.

 *Location*

 Climbing up the steep 2-mile track from the unbelievably scenic village of
 Crookhaven, one arrives at an exposed headland 100m above sea level with
 tremendous sea vistas [image 1271].  The Fastnet Rock Lighthouse lies about
 15 nautical miles to the southeast, and there are great takeoffs to the
 southeast and Europe, and to the southwest towards North America.  Because
 of Brow Head’s location as the first landfall for ships arriving from the
 Americas, it was the ideal site for communicating with them.  Also located
 on this site are the remains of a Martello tower (the site of Marconi’s
 station at least at the start of his time on Brow Head) and the remains of
 a signalling station used by Lloyds in the early 1800s to communicate with
 ships via flags and semaphore. [image 0307]

 *Crookhaven*

 The nearby village of Crookhaven was a communications centre for shipping
 long before Marconi arrived.  Paul Julius Reuter, founder of what became
 the Reuters news agency, built a telegraph line to Cork which was opened in
 1863.  He used the steamer *Marseilles* to go out and meet the ships
 travelling from America.  Reuter’s operation enabled him to cable ships’
 arrival times and cargo details etc to the shipping companies.  It was via
 Crookhaven that Europe first learned of many events in the American Civil
 War.  During this time, Crookhaven’s post and telegraph office was so busy
 that it operated 24 hours a day.

 *Marconi on Brow Head*

 In 1901, Marconi set up his wireless station here.  In the summer of that
 year he received strong signals from Poldhu in Cornwall which proved that
 wireless signals did not in fact travel in straight lines but bent to the
 curvature of the earth.  This convinced Marconi that it would be possible
 to span the Atlantic with wireless.  With more and more ships being fitted
 with wireless, the station was very busy with two operators on duty around
 the clock.  The station at Brow Head was used by Marconi’s Wireless
 Telegraph Company Ltd until 1914 and continued to be used by the Royal Navy
 until its destruction in 1922 by anti-treaty forces during the civil
 war.  Pictured
 above [image 1267] is a concrete antenna base, one of several on the Brow
 Head site.  Marconi’s daughter, Princess Elettra, unveiled a commemorative
 plaque on the site on 23 July 1998, but alas it has been removed by persons
 unknown.

 Marconi brought six men from Britain to operate his new wireless facility,
 and of particular note among them was Arthur Nottage (pictured above)
 [image Arthur_Nottage].  Having previously worked for the London &
 North-Eastern Railway as a Morse code operator, at the age of 20 Arthur
 Nottage moved to Crookhaven and became Marconi’s first
 signaller/telegrapher at Brow Head for the princely wage of £1 per week.  He
 took up lodgings at the Welcome Inn public house in Crookhaven and soon
 fell in love with its proprietress, the widow Mrs Thomas Notter.  Arthur
 Nottage later married Hannah Notter.  An entry in his journal (excerpt
 pictured below) [image Nottage_Notebook] records that he ‘took over Marconi
 Wireless station Saturday 10pm Dec 17th 1904.’

 In 1914, when Marconi moved his wireless station from Brow Head to Valentia
 Island, County Kerry, Arthur Nottage chose to stay in Crookhaven.  In the
 early 1920s he and his wife purchased the Welcome Inn and ‘Daddy’ Nottage,
 as he was known locally, continued to beguile his customers with party
 tricks and riddles up to his death in 1974.  He is pictured above in 1961
 at the door of the Welcome Inn during the making of an MGM film.  Arthur
 Nottage is fondly remembered by many in the village to this day.  Guglielmo
 Marconi and the prestige and notoriety that he brought to the community of
 Crookhaven for those fleeting thirteen years is also remembered locally
 with great pride.

 Using the call sign Ei5IMD, Cork Radio Club first activated Brow Head
 during International Marconi Day in 1995.  Picture below [image EI5IMD
 Group 2011] are those involved in the activation during 2011.  Cork Radio
 Club would like to thank the people of Crookhaven for their continued
 support of our International Marconi Day activities on Brow Head.

 –
 from Tim McKnight, Ei2KA