Tag Archives: lighthouse

ALK Archives Working Bee and Film Screening

A unique opportunity to discover the films and audio held in the archives of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, including reel-to-reel and video footage.

The three-day event will be run under the auspices of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers (ALK), with support from Bidston Lighthouse (where the ALK Archives are held) and Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre (where the event will take place).

The goal of the weekend is to check the film footage currently held in the ALK Archive, reviewing the contents and condition of various reels of cine film, super-8, VHS cassettes, DVDs and perhaps slides. We hope that this event will improve the catalogue and set some priorities for preservation and digitising. There are likely to be two screening rooms most of the time and our Archivist would like ALK members to be involved in the selection, screening, handling, note-taking etc. during the event.

The event will begin on the afternoon of Friday 28th February. A buffet supper will be provided that evening with the screenings beginning at around 7pm. The screenings will continue through Saturday and Sunday and there is the possibility of visits to Bidston Lighthouse on the Saturday and Leasowe Lighthouse on the Sunday afternoon.

The charge for attending the event is £7.50 per person per day or £15 per person per night for those wishing to stay over at the Observatory, which contains superior Youth Hostel-style accommodation with shared rooms. Food will be provided at the following prices: £3 for breakfast, £5 for lunch, and £6 for dinner. Tea, coffee, soft drinks, cakes and biscuits will be included in the daily charge.

Booking

Pre-booking is essential, both for day visitors and residents.

There are limited accommodation spaces and, as a result, they will be allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

To sign up for the event or find out more call 0151 653 7816 (speak to Mandy or Stephen) or email archive@alk.org.uk


Provisional Programme

Friday

As some people will be travelling from far afield, Friday’s activities will be fairly informal.

2pm – 6pm Informal workshop. Set-up, equipment checking, practice screenings.

6pm – 9pm. Dinner. A buffet-style dinner will be available until 9pm, so that late arrivals need not go hungry.

7:30pm – 10:30pm. Screenings in room 1.

Saturday

Breakfast available (Observatory residents only).

10am – 1pm Cine-film Screenings in room 1

10am – 1pm Other Screenings in room 2

1pm – 2pm Lunch

2pm – 6pm Screenings in room 1

2pm – 3:30pm Optional tour of Bidston Lighthouse (including visit to the archives). There will be no charge for the tour, but donations towards the maintenance of the lighthouse will be gratefully accepted.

3:30pm – 6pm Screenings in room 2

6pm – 7pm Chill. A chance to relax and socialise.

7pm Dinner

8:30pm – 10:30pm Screenings in room 1

Sunday

Breakfast available (Observatory residents only).

10am – 1pm Cine-film Screenings in room 1

10am – 1pm Other Screenings in room 2

1pm – 2pm Lunch

2pm End of formal proceedings.

Those who don’t need to travel home straight away might consider:

  • Helping pack up and return film and equipment to the Archives at Bidston Lighthouse next door. We will be grateful.
  • Visiting Leasowe Lighthouse, which will be open from 12 noon until 4pm (last tour at 3:30pm, normal charges will apply). Leasowe Lighthouse is a short 10-15 minute drive away.
  • Going for a walk on Bidston Hill (very pleasant if the weather is fair). Copies of the Bidston Hill Heritage Trail booklet will be available at both the Lighthouse and Observatory (recommended donation of 50p to the Friends of Bidston Hill).
  • Visiting the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales in Liverpool. The aircraft carrier will arrive in Liverpool on Friday 28th February, and stay for a week. The Royal Navy says: “Exact timings for the ship’s arrival in Liverpool, and details of how to obtain tickets to visit the ship, will be announced in due course, dependent on weather conditions and operational commitments.”

Acknowledgments

The organisers would like to thank Tate Liverpool and Wirralcam for the loan of audiovisual equipment.

 

Turn Left for Liverpool

"Turn left for Liverpool", by Bob Hughes, October 2018. Original size: A3

“Turn Left for Liverpool”, © Bob Hughes, 2018.

Those who know their local maritime history may appreciate the significance of this picture. Before the present-day approach into Liverpool by the regularly dredged Queen’s Channel, ships had to navigate the dangerous Rock Channel along the Wirral coast.

The lighthouses at Bidston, Leasowe and Hoylake played a vital role in this manoeuvre. When the ships saw that the Bidston and Leasowe lights were in line and likewise the two lights at Hoylake, this marked the spot where the ships should change direction, hence “Turn Left for Liverpool”.

The picture is in a style which I called ‘Reverse Perspective’ when I devised it in 2016. But it all started a long time ago. From my primary school window in Poulton I could see the windmill upon Bidston Hill, only a mile or so to the west. My eyes focussed on the windmill; I wasn’t interested in the houses, docks and warehouses in between.

When in later life I wanted to paint a picture of this view, I realised it would be a boring job painting all those houses and docks with the windmill reduced to a tiny shape on the horizon.

Simple answer: ignore them. Or at least reduce them to near irrelevance.

The result: a complete reversal of normal perspective to “Reverse Perspective“.

I have also broken most of the rules of TIME, SPACE, and COLOUR.

Space: by moving buildings so that they are better positioned for the benefit of the composition as a whole. In the process – complete disregard for accuracy when depicting such buildings, nearly all drawn from memory.

Time: in my pictures buildings or scenes from different ages of history can appear together, simultaneously.

And Colour, of course: I want to paint bright, happy pictures, the more colour the better. People immediately recognise the places they depict. The contents of the pictures act as a stimulus to the real pictures, stories, knowledge of the places in your own head.

It’s meant to be fun. Enjoy it.

Bob Hughes, October 2018.

Wirral’s sea lights to shine again for one night only

Wirral’s Sea Lights – Bidston and Leasowe Lighthouses – are to shine again for one night only, on Sunday 11th November 2018. The occasion is the nationwide “WW1 Beacons of Light” event, part of the “Battle’s Over” pageant which marks the centenary of signing the Armistice at the end of the First World War.

This will be the first time that the Sea Lights have been lit together in more than 110 years. Leasowe Lighthouse last shone on 5th July 1908. Bidston’s light was put out for the last time at sunrise on 9th October 1913.

British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey wasn’t thinking of lighthouses when he remarked, on the eve of the First World War:

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

It’s been more than a lifetime since the Sea Lights last shone together, so we can’t help being just a little bit excited. But our celebrations will be tempered not only by the reminder of the horrors of war, but also by nostalgia for the lost profession of lighthouse-keeping – it’s twenty years since the last lighthouse in England (North Foreland) was de-manned.

Also in this article:

What to expect on the night

Neither Bidston nor Leasowe Lighthouse will be open to the public on 11th November. At Bidston, there will be a small private gathering.

The lights will be lit at 7pm and switched off around midnight.

The character of both lights will be “white, fixed” (which means they are white in colour and don’t flash). This is the same as the historical character of the lights when they were last operational.

The lights will be visible on the seaward side of the two lighthouses. Both lights are masked by the stonework of their lamp rooms, such that they will be visible for about 70 degrees either side of an imaginary line drawn from Bidston Lighthouse through Leasowe Lighthouse. To see both lights at the same time, you’ll need to be seaward of Leasowe Lighthouse.

Technical details and notice to mariners

The lamps that we’re using are ex-service lanterns that we acquired from Trinity House early last year. These are fairly modern (about 15 years old), low-powered LED affairs. Bidston will exhibit a 3-tier SABIK LED-350 (36W) lantern, and Leasowe will exhibit a smaller 3-tier SABIK LED-155 (18W) lantern. These lamps both have a very narrow vertical divergence (about 2 degrees), which means that the light is concentrated into a narrow “focal plane” that widens slowly with distance. If my sums are correct, the bright part of Bidston’s light won’t intersect with an observer at sea level closer than about 4 miles, which is out at sea. Of course the lights will appear much brighter to an elevated observer at close range, like a drone perhaps.

These lights are not as bright as the lamps that were used in the latter days of the Sea Lights. Another difference is the horizontal divergence. When Leasowe was last operational, it used an oil-burning catoptric light (i.e. a parabolic reflector) which gave a fairly narrow beam aimed at the horizon (so it wasn’t as bright off the central axis of the reflector). Bidston’s light was a first order dioptric lens with vertical condensing prisms, also oil-burning; the lens gave a focal plane, with a narrow vertical divergence, while the vertical condensing prisms concentrated the light from the focal plane into a beam centred on the Horse Channel.

Peel Ports issued the official Notice to Mariners on 30 October 2018. The text is reproduced here.

Notice to Mariners

No. 60 – 2018

PORT OF LIVERPOOL

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that as part of the nationwide WWI Beacons of Light event, the disused lighthouses at Bidston and Leasowe will be re-lit temporarily.

Duration: 1900 to 2359 on 11 November 2018
Bidston LtHo Leasowe LtHo
Latitude: 53° 24.066′ N 53° 24.789′ N
Longitude: 3° 4.461′ W 3° 7.551′ W
Elevation: 66m above MHWS 29m above MHWS
Character: White, fixed White, fixed
Range (nominal): 15nm (est.) 10nm (est.)
Arc of visibility: Both lights will be visible within an arc of 140°
centred on a bearing on 291.48°(T)

Mariners are advised that the temporary re-lighting of the two lighthouses is for commemorative purposes only, and the lights exhibited must not be considered as aids to navigation.

History of the Sea Lights

"Turn left for Liverpool", by Bob Hughes, October 2018.

“Turn left for Liverpool”, by Bob Hughes, October 2018.

The Sea Lights were originally established in 1763 to guide ships through the Horse Channel, a safe passage between the sandbanks of Hoyle Bank and Burbo Bank in Liverpool Bay, before venturing through the Rock Channel and onwards to the Port of Liverpool. When the original lower light collapsed a few years later, a new lighthouse was built to replace it, 2.3 miles further inland on Bidston Hill. To make this work, Liverpool’s Harbour Master, William Hutchinson, came up with a new method of lighthouse illumination – oil lamps equipped with parabolic reflectors. Bidston’s reflector – a massive 12 feet in diameter – was probably the largest of its kind ever deployed in an operational lighthouse. It wasn’t long before Trinity House, the Northern Lighthouse Board and the rest of the world copied Hutchinson’s invention.

The Sea Lights, at 2.3 miles apart, were the most widely separated pair of leading lights in the world. Bidston Lighthouse, 2.4 miles from the high water mark by Leasowe Lighthouse, claims the distinction of being the world’s most inland lighthouse ever.

The Sea Lights were made obsolete by changes in Liverpool Bay. When Leasowe Lighthouse was discontinued, in 1908 the Horse Channel was barely navigable. Most ships were using the new Queen’s Channel, which is still in use today.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to:

Frequently asked questions

Q. If I take a boat out on 11th November, will the Sea Lights guide me safely through the Horse Channel?
A. No! Please don’t do that! The channels and sandbanks of Liverpool Bay have changed a lot since the Sea Lights were last operational. If you do take a boat into Liverpool Bay on the 11th November, you should be able to see the Sea Lights from several miles distance. But for navigational purposes, you should rely on your usual GPS equipment and up-to-date sea charts. There are more than 350 shipwrecks in Liverpool Bay, and we won’t be held responsible for another, despite Wirral’s age-old tradition of wrecking and smuggling!

Q. Aren’t Bidston and Leasowe lit already?
A. No, not really. At Bidston we have a strip of colour-changing LED lights which switch on around dusk and off after midnight. The light from these is unfocussed and can’t be mistaken for an operational Aid to Navigation. There’s a similar arrangement at Leasowe.

Q. Why can’t you do this every night?
A. There are strict regulations governing lighthouses and other aids to navigation, and we don’t want to be charged with setting false lights! Only Lighthouse Authorities are allowed to operate lighthouses. Peel Ports is the Local Lighthouse Authority for Liverpool, a responsibility they inherited from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. Trinity House is the Lighthouse Authority for England and Wales, the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) is the Lighthouse Authority for Scotland and the Isle of Man, and the Commissioners of Irish Lights (CIL) are the Lighthouse Authority for Eire and Northern Island. Both the NLB and CIL defer to Trinity House on certain matters.

Q. What does “nominal range” mean?
A. Without getting too technical, the “nominal range” is a measure of the strength of the light. It’s not related to the “geographic range”, i.e. the distance from which a shipboard observer in clear weather could be expected to see the light if it was bright enough. The geographic range is determined solely by the elevation of the light above the sea. When last operational, the Sea Lights were bright enough to be seen at the full limit of their geographic range (21 nautical miles for Bidston, and 14 for Leasowe).

Q. When can I visit Bidston and Leasowe Lighthouses?
A. Bidston Lighthouse is closed until Spring next year, although private tours can still be arranged during the winter months; details of future public open days will be posted on the Bidston Lighthouse Events page. The last two open days at Leasowe Lighthouse this season are on the 4th and 18th November, both Sunday afternoons; Leasowe Lighthouse will re-open on the first Sunday in March 2019.


This article was updated on 31 October 2018 following the release of the official Notice to Mariners by Peel Ports. You can see all the Notices to Mariners for the Port of Liverpool on this page.

Unknown Scottish Lighthouse

Can anyone identify the Scottish lighthouse in this drawing?

Drawing of unidentified Scottish Lighthouse

Drawing of unidentified Scottish Lighthouse

It was found in a box of plans in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board collection at the Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives. The handwritten annotation reads “George F. Lyster Esq. with the compliments of D. &. T. Stevenson, Edin. 10 April 1871”.

David and Thomas Stevenson were brothers, sons of Scottish lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson (who visited Wirral in 1801 and 1828). David and Thomas built many lighthouses together for the Northern Lighthouse Board.

In 1871, George Fosbery Lyster, Engineer-in-Chief for Mersey Docks, was planning a replacement for the old Bidston Lighthouse. Most likely, Lyster wrote to his counterparts in the NLB to request a copy of a drawing of a recent lighthouse of their design. We already know that he obtained drawings of St Bees Lighthouse from James Douglass of Trinity House at about the same time.

September is all about Scottish Lighthouses and the Stevenson dynasty. Yesterday, I wrote up Robert Stevenson’s remarks about the encroachment of the sea upon the Cheshire shore. Tomorrow, the NLB is opening their headquarters to the public. And at the end of the month, the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses is hosting the Annual General Meeting of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers.

Thanks to Yu-Chen Wang for bringing the drawing to my attention.

If you have any information that might help us identify this lighthouse, please comment on this post, or write to us via our contact page.

Women in the workplace

On International Women’s Day, we remember some of the important women in the history of Bidston Lighthouse and Observatory.

Elizabeth Wilding, Liverpool’s first female Lighthouse Keeper.

When Richard Wilding, keeper of Bidston Lighthouse, died in March 1797 at the ripe old age of 85, the Liverpool Dock Committee needed to appoint a successor. Richard’s widow, Elizabeth Wilding,  35 years his junior, had already been doing a lot of the work, so she was the natural choice but for one problem – she was a woman. Perhaps the Dock Committee were influenced by the fact that Mrs Cormes was doing a good job for the Chester trustees at Point of Ayr Lighthouse at Talacre, following her appointment as Lighthouse Keeper in 1791. Anyway, the Dock Committee did take the bold step of appointing Elizabeth in April 1797, albeit with some unusal conditions attached.

“Elizabeth Wilding Widow of the late Richard Wilding … is hereby appointed Keeper of the Bidston Lighthouse in Cheshire at the clear annual Salary of Fifty Pounds so long as she shall continue to behave herself properly and attentively and employ her Son in Law Captain William Urmson as her Assistant and shall not attempt to employ or use the said Building called the Bidston Lighthouse or any of its Appendages as a Publick House.”

Elizabeth died in service only three years later, and was succeeded by her son-in-law and assistant William Urmson, a former sea captain. She must have done a good job, because in later years the Dock Committee did not hesitate to appoint female keepers at other lighthouses – unlike Trinity House, who never appointed a woman as Principal Keeper in 500 years.

When John Jones was dismissed as keeper of Leasowe Lighthouse “for intoxication and insubordination” in 1854, his wife Ann was appointed as keeper in his place. Leasowe’s last lighthouse keeper was Mary Elizabeth Williams, who served from 1894 to 1908. And at Bidston, we had the Urmson sisters.

The Urmson sisters

William Urmson was assisted by his three daughers Ann, Jane and Catherine. This contemporary account by George Head in 1835 is delightful and illuminating.

Biddestone Hill, about three miles from Woodside, commands an extensive view of the country inland, while the forest of signal poles, with which the lighthouse is surrounded, give it, at a distance, an extraordinary appearance—that of a dock or harbour on the top of a hill. Hence the merchant vessels bound to Liverpool are signalled and telegraphed in the offing, the poles alluded to bearing the private signals of different individuals. And what must be remarked as rather singular is, that, notwithstanding the arduous duty which necessarily falls on the station, the whole is performed, almost exclusively, by young women, daughters of the veteran in charge. The old man, who is thus ably supported in the winter of life, is fourscore years old, and has held the office upward of forty years. Although boys are employed to run backward and forward, out of doors, with colours to the poles, and haul them up; and one of the three young women is married, and occasionally assisted by her husband; yet it is she who, being perfect in the whole code of signals, performs the responsible part of the duty. This couple were both at work together at the time I arrived, the young woman keeping the lookout, and calling the numbers, while the man, merely at her bidding, pulled the ropes. She not only kept him employed, but managed meanwhile to iron a shirt into the bargain.

The business of the youngest sister is to attend the light, consisting of eleven Argand lamps, with plated reflectors. Every four hours during the night the lamps are trimmed; these, the stove, copper, oil jars, and paved floor, are preserved in a state of cleanliness not to be exceeded; while no doubt, many a mariner, on a wintry and stormy night, both knows and feels that his life and safety are thus well confided to the never-failing care of — woman.

The old man in the story is William Urmson, who died later that very year. The three women were the surviving daughters of his second wife:  Ann (who was to succeed William as keeper), Catherine (the youngest, who attended the light), and Jane (who kept the lookout and called the numbers).

In their turn, Ann and Jane respectively held the offices of lighthouse and telegraph keeper in their own right. But you would glean a very different impression from the census records, which list Ann only as the wife of John Urmson, Lighthouse Keeper and Jane as the wife of Thomas Nichols, Telegraph Keeper. Urmson was both Ann’s maiden and married name; her husband John was a second cousin.

Doodson’s “Computers”

Arthur Doodson, the man behind the mechanical tide predicting machines at Bidston Observatory, exclusively employed young women to operate them. Their job title was “computer” and an essential qualification for the post was good handwriting. These young ladies computed tide tables around the world, including those that were used to plan the D-Day landings.

The ladies in this post-war photograph of the Observatory Staff by the One O’Clock gun are, proceeding clockwise from Valerie Doodson at the front left:
Valerie Doodson née Boyes, Jean Harman née MacFarlane, Dorothy Ainsworth, Eunice Murrell née Heath, Barbara Trueman-Jones, Margaret Lennon née Weston, Margaret Ireland née Wylie, Sylvia Asquith née Brooks, and Olwyn Branscombe.

Observatory staff by the one-o-clock gun

Observatory staff by the one-o-clock gun.

Mary Connell

For seventy-seven years, Mary Connell was a constant presence on the hill that she loved. She moved into the Lighthouse Cottages in 1937 with her parents Mick and Mary Connell and younger sister Patricia. She worked as a funeral director for many years, and walked her dogs on Bidston Hill twice a day. She fought the combined lawyers of Wirral Borough Council and the Natural Environment Research Council for the right to stay in the Lighthouse Cottages, and against all the odds, she won. She was in her seventies when ill health forced her to retire.

After the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory abandoned Bidston Hill in 2004, Mary was the only person living on the site (until guardians were eventually installed in the Joseph Proudman Building and the Observatory). Her only defenses against the disaffected youths who prowled the site at night were a walking stick, her sharp tongue, and the brambles she allowed to grow around the Lighthouse Cottages. Her sharp tongue was the most formidable of these. We miss her.

Mary Connell, 1934-2014

Related articles

The world’s most inland lighthouse

Bidston Lighthouse is the world’s most inland lighthouse.

By this I mean that of all the lighthouses in the world that were constructed as genuine navigational aids to mariners, none were built further from the body of water they lit than Bidston’s.

Liverpool’s Sea Lights were a pair of leading lights that guided ships through the Horse Channel.  A line drawn from the upper light at Bidston through the lower light at Leasowe crosses the high water mark on Mockbeggar Wharf at a distance of 2.1 nautical miles (2.4 statute miles, or 3.9 kilometres). The distance between the upper and lower lights is 2 nautical miles (2.3 statute miles or 3.7 kilometres), also making the Sea Lights the furthest apart of any pair of leading lights in the world.

There are, of course, many lighthouses further from the sea than Bidston’s. They can be found on river banks, or canals, or lake shores, and have provided valuable service to mariners as navigational aids. But these were all built relatively close to the body of water that they lit.

I also rule out aerial lighthouses, such as the one at RAF Cranwell, in Lincolnshire. A few of these were built as navigational aids to pilots, not mariners, and they lit the sky, not the sea.

Some otherwise interesting “lighthouses” are disqualified on the grounds of not being genuine navigational aids to mariners.

During  the 1920s, Benito Mussolini ordered the construction of a lighthouse atop his summer palace at Rocca delle Caminate, some 25 kilometres from the Adriatic Sea, and commanded the Italian Navy to include it in their list of operational lights. Flashing red, white and blue when Il Duco was in residence, it provided good service as a monument to the dictator’s vanity. Perhaps it helped the locals find their way home in the dark, but it was of no use to mariners as a navigational aid.

Rocca delle Caminate in 1939. Photo by E. Zoli Forlì.

Rocca delle Caminate in 1939. Photo by E. Zoli Forlì.

Cape Todd Lighthouse stands in the desert of central Australia, near Alice Springs, on the banks of the Todd River, which is usually dry. That doesn’t stop the Aussies from holding the annual  Henley-on-Todd regatta, in which contestants bring their own bottomless boats and carry them at a run along the Todd River. They like to claim that the Lighthouse is a navigational aid, because it stops the contestants from running out of bounds during the race. Built by amateur radio enthusiasts, Cape Todd Lighthouse took part in the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend in 2013 and again in 2014, when it was listed as a “faux” lighthouse.

Cape Todd Lighthouse, near Alice Springs, Australia

Cape Todd Lighthouse, near Alice Springs, Australia

I stand by my claim until such time as someone provides evidence of a greater distance, or the Italian Navy blockades Liverpool in protest.

If you do know of any interesting inland lighthouses, please let us know by commenting on this post. We’d also like to hear about any claims for the most inland operational lighthouse, or for the most widely separated operational pairs of leading lights.

Further reading

 

Female Lighthouse Keepers

Lighthouse keeping is generally regarded as a male profession. But it was not uncommon for a lighthouse keeper to be assisted by his family, and no doubt many seafarers owe their lives to the wives and daughters who kept the light burning when the keeper was ill, asleep or in his cups.  Most of these women have been forgotten by history, with the notable exception of Grace Darling.

Lucy, the keeper in Margaret Elphinstone’s well-researched and insightful novel “Light“, is fictional.

Trinity House, which celebrated its 500th anniversary in 2014, never appointed a woman to the post of Principal Keeper (PK). It probably never will, because the last manned lighthouse operated by Trinity House, North Foreland, was automated in 1998.

Liverpool’s Dock Committee was more enlightened. They appointed Elizabeth Wilding as keeper of Bidston Lighthouse in 1797 (albeit with conditions attached), following the death of her husband Richard. She was succeeded by her son-in-law and assistant William Urmson in 1800. Ann Urmson, William’s second daughter by his second wife,  was PK at Bidston from 1835 until 12 May 1869. Richard, Elizabeth, William and Ann all died in service. William’s other daughters helped at the Bidston station: Jane kept the telegraph, and Catherine assisted with the light.

Leasowe Lighthouse also had two female Principal Keepers. When John Jones was dismissed “for intoxication and insubordination” in 1854, his wife Ann was appointed in his place. John died in 1857, still a resident of the lighthouse. Ann Jones died in service on 23 Jul 1867. [1, pages 33-34]. The last lighthouse keeper at Leasowe Lighthouse was Mary Elizabeth Williams. When her husband Thomas Williams died in 1894, Mrs Williams took over as PK. Apart from the lighthouse, she also had eight children (including a baby) to look after. Fortunately, some of her children were old enough to help. She was still in post when Leasowe’s light was discontinued on 15 July 1908. After the closure, she carried on as caretaker until November of the following year [1, pages 37-40].

Elizabeth Wilding was the first female lighthouse keeper to be appointed by Liverpool. But the Chester trustees were a few years ahead, having appointed Mrs Cormes as keeper of Point of Ayr Lighthouse in 1791 [1, page 46].

The Lancaster Port Commission appointed Margaret Grace Braithwaite née Swarbrick (9 Jul 1919 – 12 Jan 1996, known as Peggy) as Assistant Keeper of Walney Island Lighthouse in 1967, and promoted her to Principal Keeper in 1975. Her father Fred Swarbrick (died 5 Oct 1952) , sister Ella (died 16 Jan 1967), and Ella’s husband Albert Wheeler (known as Bert) had kept the lighthouse before her. Peggy was awarded the MBE in 1984. When she retired ten years later at the age of 74, she was the last Female Principal Keeper in England. Walney Island Lighthouse was not de-manned until 2003, making it the last manned lighthouse in the British Isles.

If you know of any women who served as Principal Keeper, please let us know by commenting on this post.

References

  1. John and Diane Robinson, Lighthouses of Liverpool Bay, Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2011.

Drawing of unknown lighthouse, 1871

Can anyone identify the lighthouse in this drawing?

Drawing showing plan and elevations of unknown lighthouse, possibly by James N. Douglass, 1871.

Plan and elevations of unknown lighthouse, possibly by James N. Douglass, 1871.

The drawing was found in a box containing plans of Bidston Lighthouse in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board collection at the Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives. It is signed and dated Jas. N. Douglass, 1871 (I think). If my reading of the signature is correct, then the architect would be the famous James Nicholas Douglass F.R.S., who built many important lighthouses for Trinity House, including the fourth Eddystone Lighthouse.

Was this design commissioned by Mersey Docks for the new Bidston Lighthouse only to be rejected in favour of a later design by the MDHB’s own George Fosbery Lyster? Or was it for another lighthouse altogether, perhaps used as inspiration for Lyster’s own design?

If you have any information that might help us identify this lighthouse, please comment on this post, or write to us via our contact page.

ALK AGM 2015

The Annual General Meeting of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers took place on the Island of Portland, in Dorset, on the last weekend in September, 2015. There were excursions to Anvil Point Lighthouse, Portland Bill, the old Portland upper and lower lights, and a boat trip out to the Portland Breakwater Light. Anvil Point and Portland Bill are still operational. The old upper light is now holiday accommodation, and the lower light is a bird observatory. It was a privilege to visit the breakwater light with retired lighthouse keeper Gordon Medlicott, who was stationed there in 1967, the year it was decommissioned.

The French Visitor

In 1785, the French engineer Joseph Cachin drew this delightful illustration of Bidston Lighthouse.

Drawings of Bidston Lighthouse and reflector, by Joseph Cachin, 1785.

Drawings of Bidston Lighthouse and reflector, by Joseph Cachin, 1785.

Cachin’s careful drawings include a scale, and one can take measurements from them. The scale is in toises and pieds du roi. These units were used in France before the Revolution. There were twelve pouces in one pied du roi, and six pieds du roi in one toise. Pouce, pied du roi and toise correspond respectively to the Imperial units inch, foot and fathom, but were slightly longer. Thus one toise was 1.066 fathoms, 6.394 feet, or 1.949 metres.

If you measure the diameter of the reflector in the drawing using Cachin’s scale, and convert back to Imperial units, you should get a value very close to 12 feet. This is the size that William Hutchinson reported in 1777 in his Treatise on Practical Seamanship, but less than the thirteen-and-a-half feet reported by Robert Stevenson when he visited Bidston Lighthouse in 1801. Perhaps Stevenson was more casual while he was still learning the trade of lighthouse-engineering, for he seems also to have exaggerated the height of Leasowe Lighthouse.

Bidston’s reflector was (probably) the largest parabolic reflector ever to be installed in an operational lighthouse. It was also one of the first – Hutchinson installed parabolic reflectors in all the Wirral lighthouses about the same time. Hutchinson’s breakthrough in lighthouse optics was driven by the needs of Bidston Lighthouse, which was built further from the body of water it lit than any other lighthouse in the world (a record it holds to this day).

As far as I know, Cachin’s is the only drawing to show a cross section of the lamp room, with the stairs that the keeper would climb to replenish the oil reservoir, and the elaborate chimney through which the smoke and vapours of the lamp would escape.

Joseph Cachin (1757-1825) was a French engineer, best known for his work at Cherbourg Harbour. In 1785, while at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, he travelled to Britain and the United States. In England, he visited the ports of Sheerness, Liverpool, Bristol, Portsmouth, the quarries of Portland, and the Hospital at Greenwich. He examined lighthouses and lime-kilns, the cranes on the Bridgewater Canal, and studied the materials used in their construction. (Readers of French can check my translation against this article.)

My thanks to Thomas Tag of the United States Lighthouse Society for bringing the drawing to my attention.