After 30 years as a deep-sea diver, Keith Beck left the water and turned to timber. Now, in a quiet corner of Co Wexford, he is a craftsman in wood. In a radical career change, he built his present house and woodturning workshop entirely from timber, 2 1/2 miles from the south Wexford village of Taghmon.
His departure from the hazardous occupation of diving was prompted, he says, "because I got too long in the tooth for it".
His relocation to Ireland had something to do with the fact that he had married a Wexford woman.
Cumberland-born, Keith joined the Royal Navy as a rigger and became a navy diver, specialising in mine and bomb disposal. After some 10 years, he moved into civilian diving, working mainly on oilfields and eventually travelling throughout the world as a diving consultant.
In the early 1980s he came to his wife, Joan's, home parish and set about building a house. "I always fancied a timber house," he says. "I had helped two lads in Stavanger, Norway, to build a timber-framed house in 1968 and I just couldn't believe how easy it was."
His two-storey five-bedroomed house, completed in 1983, is made of native Irish timber, pressure treated, insulated with rockwool and lined inside with plasterboard and hardwall.
The house is warm in winter and cool in summer. The timber cladding is aligned vertically, as is the practice in western Norway, so that the rainwater runs off it. "It is a very economical house to look after," he points out. "All it needs is a coat of preservative every eight years or so."
He was lucky enough to have learned the rudiments of woodturning at school at the age of 10, so he decided to build his new livelihood on that basic skill.
About 50 per cent of his present work is craft-related, and 50 per cent joinery-related. In his craft work, he turns out elegant bowls, lamp bases, and a variety of small, practical objects in native wood. He also produces a range of realistic wooden mushroom shapes, which are very popular in Switzerland - a mushroom-conscious country which enjoys a wide variety of the edible fungi.
He is particularly fond of yew, a venerable tree that can continue growing for as long as 2,000 years and points out that there should be stronger preservation measures to protect the yew species.
On the couple's 17-acre holding, he has planted 12 1/2 acres of broad-leaved trees, mainly sycamore, ash and beech "because the very heavy land around here suits them". He asserts that "if you plant 20 spruce trees, in a lifetime you'll have enough timber to reclad the house".
Keith admits that woodturning is not an occupation from which it is easy to make substantial money. But it has given him a satisfying alternative living, in a peaceful rural setting a long way removed from the ocean depths.