Pointe de Penmarc’h, Finistère – the Eckmuhl lighthouse
Built in 1867 this lighthouse is 64 metres high and still safeguarding this dangerous stretch of coast due to its conversion to automated working.
Its construction was financed by the family of the Prince of Eckmuhl, an ordinary Breton mercenary soldier who had been ennobled and enriched after taking command and winning a war in Bavaria. After his death, his family chose to use the fortune which he had earned in the carnage of war to build him a monument which would save lives instead.
The lighthouse was built on a peninsula already steeped in history, and with a long history of lighthouses – two others are still visible, including the mediaeval chapel tower. Thrusting south-west into the Atlantic Ocean the headland comes close to being the southernmost point of Finistère (Clohars-Carnoët takes that title, but its cliff is completely unspectacular).
On the peninsula’s sheltered southern side it has always been possible to beach a boat. Today a guardian mole shields small craft at their moorings, but even before this was built Penmarc’h was a thriving port; in early times it took in deliveries for the king’s palace in its hinterland.
The name Penmarc’h comes from penn (head) and marc’h (which is Breton for horse, but also used as a personal name, and in this case it was the name of a king). Marc’h Cunomorus reigned over the local area from 480 to 555 AD, when what we now call Finistère was known as Cornouaille. The early part of his reign coincides with that of King Arthur, a period during which Anglo-Saxon incursions into the British Isles were held in check and the invaders were kept out of the west of Britain. It is possible that Marc’h held the kingship of both Cornwalls, north and south of the Channel, before Arthur’s death allowed the Anglo-Saxons to take over his northern kingdom.
But Marc’h was still king of a substantial kingdom, and even after 1500 years he is remembered in Finistère as a great and powerful monarch, albeit a cruel one. But the length of his reign indicates that he was hardy enough to survive perilous times under continual sea-borne attack and hold on to his independent British kingdom in Armorica.
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