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If you look at a map of all the Cornish lighthouses you'll find that there are few on the north coast and actually not that many on the south coast either.
In total Cornwall only has nine lighthouses with three more on harbour walls. Depending on how you classify daymarks the ones that stand out are the one at Stepper on the North Coast and, almost opposite on the south coast built at the same time in 1832, the impressive red and white one at Gribbin Head (near Menabilly if you are a Daphne du Maurier fan).
You'd think that there would be more of these cheaper daymarks dotted along the coast but there aren't many.
My first memories of Cornwall are of watching the light at Trevose Lighthouse from an annex window when my family stayed at the Atlantic House Hotel.
Now, a half century later, the lighthouse business and navigation in general has changed beyond imagination. The first satellites were launched in 1957 and peaked at around 150 launched a year by 1967. Since the 70's there have been roughly a hundred a year sent into orbit. That makes them the lighthouses of the sky and anyone with a phone can quickly find exactly where on earth they are by using them.
So lighthouses and daymarks have to a certain extent had their day and Trevose Lighthouse, built in 1847, is now unmanned (since 1995) and its light less important than it has ever been. They say on a clear night it could be seen all the way up to Hartland Point in Devon. The next one down the coast from Trevose is Godrevy Lighthouse made famous by Virginia Woolfe in her novel 'To the Lighthouse'.
But despite this lack of lighthouses the North Cornwall connection with lighthouses doesn't quite end there.
As Roy on Bill's Free Walk today told the other walkers while we discussing daymarks, he lives in the Stonecutters Cottage in Wadebridge and from there hangs a tale!
Briefly, Wadebridge played an important part in one of the most famous lighthouses in the world's incredible life. The stone for Eddystone Lighthouse, certainly the 4th one, came from the De Lank quarries up near St Breward, Bodmin Moor. The granite was cut and placed on barges at Wadebridge to be taken around to Eddyson Rocks (named after the terrible eddies that covered them on spring tides) and there used in the tricky construction.
The granite from De Lank's is very high quality and still produced. It was used in London buildings like the Royal Opera House and Whitehall's New Parliamentary Building. The stonemasons in Wadebridge had their work cut out next to the quay and the town now has a street, terrace and place all named Eddystone!
The photographs with this post have all appeared before on this page. There are a lot more!
February 2016 winter sunset and the daymark at Stepper, which is basically just an empty tower for navigating to the entrance of the Camel Estuary. Beyond is the lighthouse at Trevose, that has been automated and unmanned since 1995 but was first lit in 1847.
March 2018 was a late snow month and that's Mark a neighbour surfing! When the Daymark at Stepper was first built it was painted white so that ships could more easily see it from a distance. Here it is painted white by the snow.
January 2015. Half way mark between the Stepper Daymark (right) and Stepper's Coastwatch Institute's lookout, which possibly has the best views in North Cornwall
The daymark from the Rock shoreline
October 2015. The daymark is hollow and cost £29 to construct in 1832
I was just discussing with a friend at the excellent Sea View Farm Shop Cornwall Summer festival last night, before the 3 Daft Monkeys came on, that lighthouses are part of our Cornwall collective consciousness.
Also that Carl Jung would probably understand why they might be part of my dreamscapes too!
Anyhow, I've written much over the years about lighthouses and daymarks, but just to conclude our conversation, I wonder if any of you would like to share thoughts on Cornish lighthouses?
Although now being made obsolete by satellite navigation, they still serve as a guide to navigation and are also, I believe, deeply ingrained in the Cornish collective consciousness. Jung, who coined that term, should know as he gave seminars at both Sennen and Polzeath!
He might have also witnessed the circular tides between Land's End and the Scilly Isles, which can change direction every two or three hours, making navigation challenging at the best of times!
The intrepid rower Tom Waddington has experienced that first hand as he has just rowed from Newfoundland to Cornwall to raise funds for Mind arriving early this week after an amazing attempt on the world record through the storms.
For the local record though, the earliest use of lights to aid shipping in Cornwall goes back to 1396, when fishermen paid "beaconage" to the chapel of Carn Brea.
St Michael's Mount which has a stone lantern atop its church dates from the 15th century, and a beacon at the chapel of St Nicholas in St Ives, was documented in 1538.
With the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 16th century there was a decline of these church beacons. But, Henry, to give him his due, also founded Trinity House in 1514, which eventually became responsible for providing pilots and building lighthouses around the coast.
The following timeline highlights the construction of our Cornish lighthouses:
Lizard: Built in 1619, abandoned in 1623, and rebuilt in 1752.
Eddystone: First built in 1698; the current lighthouse is the fifth on the site and the De Lank quarries via Wadebridge stonecutters helped make some of them.
Longships: Built in 1795 on rocks 1.25 miles off Land's End.
St Anthony: Built in 1835 at the entrance to Falmouth Harbour.
Trevose: Built in 1847 near Padstow.
Godrevy: Built in 1858 on Godrevy Island, St Ives Bay.
Wolf Rock: Built in 1862 on a rock 8 miles off Land's End.
Pendeen: Built in 1900 between St Ives and Land's End.
Tater Du: Opened in 1965 on the shore east of Land's End.
Feel free to share your thoughts on a lighthouse or the collective consciousness!
These include the daymarks as well as the lighthouses around the coast of Cornwall and as the map is taken from a cycling website I think we can forgive a number of spelling mistakes! Credit for map https://www.thebeaconbike.co.uk/lighthouse-maps-uk/
Looking across a calm blue sea to Trevose from Pentire.
Recently discovered wrecks in this area include those made by divers of WW2 Uboats. Come on a walk with me and I'll tell you the sad stories of how they were caught out by deep sea minefields at the end of the war.
In the picture: from left to right, Trevose Lighthouse, The Quies (I always forget how to spell them but these dangerous rocks include: The Bull and the Cow and Calf which are a lot easier to spell) and then Gulland.
Gulland is known for its nesting pairs of great black-backed gulls, which are the biggest of the gulls,slightly rare, and super cool gliders!
Tucked in time between Joel Gascoyne's 1699 detailed map of Cornwall and Thomas Martyn's 1748 map is Herman Moll's 1724 map of Cornwall.
This was part of "Fifty-six new and accurate maps of Great Britain" and had details of early mines but our area of North Cornwall is disappointingly lacking in accuracy.
Moll engraved and published many maps from London with some being used to promote worldwide British empire building interests.
Reassuringly for Cornish fishermen, he labeled the Atlantic Ocean as the "Sea of the British Empire" and marked in the cod fisheries off Newfoundland. From 1600 many fishermen sailed for over a month in summer to reach the cod rich waters there.
Note the Eddystone lighthouse marked on this map of 1724. It did not seem to fit in with my Polzeath Timeline where I have it as:
1879: Stone for Eddystone Lighthouse from De Lank Quarry, Blisland, shipped on barges out of Camel Estuary, after being cut in Wadebridge, until 1882.
However, Moll's 1724 map actually shows the second Eddystone lighthouse built around 1609 to replace the first one completed in 1698 and made out of wood. "Our lighthouse" shipped down the Camel was actually the current and fourth Eddystone Lighthouse with stone supplied from the works of Messrs Shearer, Smith and Co of Wadebridge.
2025
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, a remarkable local figure born just three miles from Polzeath in Treator.
After attending Truro Grammar School from the age of 11, Gurney began his career as a 19-year-old surgeon in Wadebridge, where he developed his interests in science and mechanics alongside his medical practice. He even built his own (rather large) piano connected to a pipe organ, got married and had a daughter.
2025 also marks 200 years since he invented a steam-driven carriage, a groundbreaking achievement. Even if it didn't go very fast between London and Bath (and back) in 1829 it was the longest journey made by a mechanical vehicle at the time.
When I was an opening the Bude Climate Festival last year, held in the home he built on sand, I was reminded of his significant contributions to lighting too.
The Bude Light memorial outside, created by Carol Vincent (my mother's art teacher!), celebrates his inventions, and especially his light ones.
Gurney's oxy-hydrogen blowpipe system, which produced a brilliant flame, revolutionized stage lighting with the invention of limelight. This innovation was quickly adopted by theaters and music halls and even illuminated the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square. Building on this, he developed the Bude Light, a brighter and more efficient alternative, which eventually evolved into the "Atmospheric Bude-Lamp."
Gurney's light inventions had significant impacts on maritime safety. His advancements in lighting technology playing a crucial role in improving the visibility and safety of lighthouses, guiding ships safely round headlands like Trevose. And he introduced the idea of using specific flashing patterns that enabled those at sea to identify which lighthouse they were seeing.
So the next time you count the seconds of darkness between each flash from Trevose lighthouse, remember that the boy from Treator had something to do with those 7.5 seconds and the brightness of the light you are seeing.
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