This site serves to grow awareness of the wartime EIRE 6 sign on Howth East Mountain(ref. 53.3749-6.04861) and of the role played by the local volunteers of the Coast Watching Service who, by manning the local look-out post throughout World War Two and constructing the EIRE-6 sign, contributed to the defence of Ireland's wartime neutrality.
The EIRE-6 sign must be protected as an important local historical monument and restored in a manner sensitive to the area’s unique landscape.
Working Together
The Howth EIRE 6 Restoration Group is a collaboration between people from local community organisations who restored the “EIRE 6” sign on Howth’s East Mountain, a large Second World War aerial recognition marker. The letters of the sign are about 12m in height formed of 1.5m-wide strips of embedded whitewashed locally-sourced stone (similar to the example at Malin Head in Donegal on the right). The sign was intended to be visible to encroaching aircraft of the combatant powers. It is a surviving monument of that war and as such part both of our national heritage and local history.
The sign was build in the summer of 1943. Lost to overgrowth & partially revealed in a fire in 1981. The sign fully restored and officially opened by President Higgins on the 9th April 2022.
By involving youth groups, schools, clubs & local families in its restoration, we aim to promote a growing awareness among the local community of its historic significance and commemorate the local volunteers of the Coast Watching Service (CWS) who manned the nearby Look-Out Post from 1939 to 1945 and installed the “EIRE 6” sign in 1943. Through their role in guarding the coastline these men played an integral part in defending Irish neutrality during World War Two.
(Left : Recently restored EIRE 6 sign in with Aircorps flyover La)
