The lighthouses scattered along the Welsh Coast aren’t only icons of coastal life; they have a long and fascinating history.

The tall and elegant custodians of Britain’s shores that dot the coastline are unmistakable traditional coastal icons. The lighthouse holds a classic air of maritime magic to the many who admire them from a distance; the romantic notion of a remote and unyielding tower lighting dark, stormy seas for passing ships is one that hasn’t diminished, despite the fact that all of Britain’s lighthouses are now run automatically and remotely.

Although there are some examples of lighthouses that date back to Roman times, the classical shape and design that we have come to know and love first appeared on our shores over 300 years ago.

Warning Light

In the mid seventeenth century, Britain dominated the world’s seas. Elegant barques, schooners and brigs from all over the country set sail to criss-cross oceans on voyages of discovery and delivery.

But the craggy and rugged coastline of Britain posed challenges and very real dangers to the mariners of the time. Rocky outcrops, small islands and jagged promontories became deadly obstacles in the pitch dark of night or bad weather.

Some early warning devices were used such as lighting fires along the shoreline, but in 1609 Trinity House, the General Lighthouse Authority for England and Wales, erected their first lighthouse at Lowestoft. So successful were the candle-lit lights at guiding ships through the perilous sandbanks that during the next 200 years, a huge wave of lighthouse building swept across the coast.

The coast of Wales was one of the busiest shipping routes in the country, and lighthouses were soon erected to guard the approaches to Merseyside in the north and the Severn in the south. One of the first lighthouses built in Wales was on the Skerries, the rocky series of islands off the northern coast of Anglesey.   This perilous stretch of water had seen many great ships washed up against its hidden rocks, and so a lighthouse was constructed in 1716. I was soon followed in 1737 by the Flat Holme Island lighthouse, which sits in the Bristol Channel, just off the coast of Cardiff. By the mid nineteenth century, almost forty of these crucially important beacons of light were scattered along the north and south Wales coastline.

Some were located on the very edge of remote coastlines, but others were far more isolated and were miles off shore; like the Smalls Lighthouse which sits on rocks over 20 miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire.

Man the Light

Early lighthouses were incredibly labour intensive. Lighthouse keepers were employed to ensure the light remained glowing throughout the night by replenishing fuel, trimming wicks and keeping watch, and also to repair any broken glass and maintain the building.

Despite modern advances (electricity was introduced to some lighthouses towards the end of the 1800s) keepers were still needed as recently as 1998, when North Foreland (off the Kent coast) became the final lighthouse in Britain to be switched to automatic control.

Light Duties

As well as manning, maintaining and repairing the light and the building, lighthouse keepers were often asked to perform other, more unusual tasks.

Lighthouse keepers would often keep watch for the coast guard, and help with rescues whenever they could. They also collated weather information for the met office, details of birds spotted for the RSPB and numbers of sea mammals such as dolphin and porpoise for Greenpeace.

With the onset of automation and remote control in the 1980s and the increased use of sophisticated navigational equipment by the shipping industry, sadly, the demand for lighthouse keepers waned.

You can find out more about the work of lighthouse keepers, and about the history of British Lighthouses from the Association of Lighthouse Keepers. www.alk.org.uk

Image by madmick99