Where the light is right

The small, sturdy metal structure of Black Nore Lighthouse was put up in 1894, to assist shipping in the Severn Estuary. It flashed every ten seconds to guide countless vessels towards and away from the harbour at Bristol, until it was taken out of service in 2010. It originally had a clockwork drive mechanism and this was only replaced with electric motors in the year 2000. Although this light is no longer needed, there’s another not far away at Battery Point, which still guides ships.

Fortunately, the lighthouse has been preserved (it now belongs to a trust that looks after it), so I could find it the other day when I was in Portishead to give a talk and arrived – as is my wont – much too early. I’m a great advocate of arriving early for meetings and talks, as it usually gives me the opportunity to have a look round somewhere and, as often as not, find some interesting bit of architecture or structure. I especially like the metal cross rods, attached with screw threads and nuts to the bit of metalwork in the centre, shown in my lower photograph.

So I was pleased to have a little time here, to find this relic – even if the sun was obscured by clouds and the scene looked a little more gloomy than I’d have hoped for. Light is as vital for photography as for navigation.

More light!

Here’s the Round Tower lighthouse at Burnham, or what’s left of it, for all that remains is the tower’s truncated stump, attached to the white building on the left, which faces on to the sea front.

Apparently the light had humble origins. A fisherman lived in a cottage somewhere near this spot in the mid-18th century, and his wife got into the habit of lighting a candle and leaving it at one of the windows to guide her husband home. Later the light was placed in the nearby church tower, so that it could be seen from further out at sea. Finally the curate of the church built the round tower – next to the churchyard, as can be seen in the photograph – so that the light was clearer still.

Even in its original tall form it wasn’t that high, and in 1832 it was replaced by the subsequent lights, so that shipping might be guided more reliably home, either to Burnham itself, or on up the River Parrett to the port of Bridgwater.

Attention all shipping

I normally leave this kind of thing to Peter Ashley, over at the excellent Unmitigated England, a fine photographer of lighthouses as of much else. He would not have parked at the far end of the sea front, leaving himself with a twenty-minute walk across a deserted beach in a stiff wind blowing tons of dry sand in a landward direction. A few hundredweight of this sand lodged itself in my nostrils and ears, more of it sandblasting my face and probably my camera lens too.

But in the end, buffeted and battered, I made it to the Low Light, Burnham’s sea-shore lighthouse on poles. This unusual structure was built in 1832. It was the third lighthouse in the town, replacing the Round Tower slightly inland, which now survives at half its original height, and complementing the High Light, a more conventional pillar lighthouse not far away.

On its nine timber posts it has held up very well, surviving both the Round Tower and the High Light, which blinked its last in 1993. The staircase is a recent replacement in galvanized steel. It takes the same form as the original wooden stair, but has openwork treads so that the load of water pressure on the structure is not so great at high tide. A light is still displayed through the window at the side of the Low Light, so it remains useful to shipping as well as a notable landmark for those walkers who are rash enough to brave the Burnham breeze.