Alexander Nimmo

In 1814, when Dunmore East was still a small County Waterford fishing hamlet, it was chosen by the British Post Office to be the Irish terminal for a new Mail Packet route from Milford Haven in Wales.

In building the harbour, Nimmo made use of local red sandstone, and his lighthouse took the form of a "fluted Doric column, with the lantern on top of the capital".

[7] Originally, Nimmo rented an office at 56 Marlborough Street, Dublin specifically for the purposes of carrying out his work for the Western District, but this building was found to be inadequate and the lease was terminated in June 1823.

[8] In September 1823, George Nimmo, living in Dublin, took out a 900-year lease on a property on the west side of Marlborough Street from the Reverend Mathias Kelly at the yearly rent of £91.

[8] In August 1826, Thomas Martin of Ballinahinch, County Galway granted a 'three-lives lease', or 99-year lease (whichever should last longest), to Nimmo, for property in the village of Roundstone in Galway consisting of "the farm and lands of the half cartron of Letterdife commonly called The White House, together with the shores and weeds thereunto belonging and also one acre now in his (Nimmo's) actual possession bounded on the east by Roundstone Bay...".

The lease was valued at the yearly rent of eighteen pounds, nine shillings and two pence, three farthings (£18.9.2d), and also specified that Nimmo could make use of the pasture on the mountain of Errisbeg in common with other tenants of Martin's.

Nimmo erected 'a lodge' at Leenaun to accommodate his workforce in that area, and in 1831, the property was given over to a tenant who converted it into 'a billeting place for travellers passing to the western coast'.

[13] Nimmo had proposed numerous sites in the west of Ireland on which viable villages could be established, concentrating the inhabitants of the rural areas into a centre where trade and industry could flourish somewhat and alleviate their poverty.

In 1828, Nimmo visited the Wirral Peninsula alongside Thomas Telford and Robert Stevenson for the purposes of studying the problems of the rivers Dee and Mersey, for which the three men later submitted a report.