The Lowestoft Lighthouses

The organisation known as Trinity House had its origins in a royal charter of 1514 granted by Henry VIII to “The Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St. Clement, in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the County of Kent”. This authorisation from the Crown enabled an organisation of Deptford-based seafarers to regulate pilotage in their part of the River Thames as a counter-measure to the activities of sub-standard unregulated pilots operating in the local reaches. Fifty-two years later in 1566, during the earlier part of Elizabeth I’s reign, the Seamarks Act of that year  enabled Trinity House (as it had become known) to authorise the setting up of “beacons, marks and signs for the sea” in English maritime locations, to enable safe passage into ports and coastal stations of various kinds. The word strond above, used in connection with Deptford, is an older form of “strand" and refers to the edge of the River Thames in that particular area. St. Clement was a 1st century Bishop of Rome, who was reputedly thrown into the sea with an anchor round his neck and thus became the main patron adopted by mariners.

Lowestoft’s “High Lighthouse” (as it was once known) had its origins back in the first half of the 17th century, but it wasn’t the first navigational aid to be established for the town. That came in 1609, when Trinity House authorised the construction of two movable “leading lights” down on the beach (candle-burning braziers, of some kind, it is said - with wood or coal, perhaps, also used). These had to be placed one behind the other on a south-south-east/north-north-west axis, then set alight during the hours of darkness so that ships wishing to enter the inshore haven could align them accurately in order to negotiate the Stanford Channel, which separated the Newcome and Holm sandbanks. 

The claim has long been made that Lowestoft had the first such coastal navigational aid(s) to be authorised by the Trinity House organisation, but it is not the case. That distinction must go to Caister-on-Sea, which had so-called “leading lights” sanctioned in the year 1607, to assist shipping make its way into Great Yarmouth’s harbour by the northern approach channel known as the Cockle Gat, which provided access between the Cockle and Barber shoals. Reference to this permission is to be found in G.G. Harris (ed.), Trinity House Transactions, 1609-1635, London Record Society series, vol. xix (1983), p. 74. The word gat itself is an old Scandinavian term for an opening or passage (especially one between sandbanks) and Yarmouth’s other main harbour approach was (and still is) the St. Nicholas Gat named after the town’s patron saint and separating the Scroby and Corton sandbanks.

In 1628, John Wild (merchant) was charged by Trinity House with supervising the building of a “highlight” on the cliff, to replace one of the beacons down on the beach – this, in order to give vessels a better alignment on the Stanford Channel, which tended to change position slightly as a result of tidal action, meaning that the beacon on the beach would have to be moved periodically to align with the light on the cliff. The site chosen for the first “high light” was towards the top of Swan Score (now, Mariner’s Score), on the northern side, and the light remained in use until about 1676, when it was replaced by one on the present site – this, on the authority of Samuel Pepys, Master of Trinity House. The new facility was possibly brought into operation, because it was clear of the built-up area of the town, whereas its predecessor was surrounded by houses and ancillary buildings and there was the constant danger of fire resulting from the sparks emitted by its wood-burning or coal-burning brazier. 

There is neither time nor space here to go into all the intricacies and innovations of Lowestoft’s main lighthouse – but, in addition to being built on a safer site, it was also the opinion of at least some of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House that a lighthouse on the top of the cliff itself was preferable to the existing arrangement. And this opinion was endorsed by Sir Thomas Allin, Lowestoft’s famous Restoration naval commander, who had purchased both the Lowestoft and Somerleyton manorial titles in 1672 and was living in retirement in the latter place. The location was a plot of land on the southern extremity of the North Common, about 200 yards away from the northernmost dwellings on the east side of the High Street, and the light was a coal-fired one set within a brick-and-flint tower which was forty feet high and twenty in diameter. A raised hearth in the uppermost part of the building (complete with flue and integral stack) was kept fuelled and flaming from sunset to sunrise, with incorporated bellows at the back of it to ensure consistent and effective combustion. There was a large aperture at the top of the lighthouse, on the seaward side, to provide visibility for mariners, and it was decided comparatively early on to glaze this – not so much to protect the fire from the effects of bad weather as to reduce further the risk of airborne sparks creating a danger to the town’s nearest houses. It was only a matter of thirty years or so before that the disastrous town fire of 10 March 1645 had occurred.

In his history of the town published in 1790 (pp. 72-4), Edmund Gillingwater records that by the year 1777 the lighthouse tower was in serious need of repair, The Elder Brethren made the decision to remove the whole of the top section and replace it with “one of the new-invented reflecting cylinders”, this being a system of cylindrically arranged plate-glass mirrors set to reflect the light created by oil-burning lamps. Gillingwater gives a detailed description of this mechanism and describes how it was tested during June 1778 on a temporary “scaffold” erected just to the north of the lighthouse. The Trinity House yacht which had brought it to Lowestoft sailed out to sea to judge its effectiveness and found this to “answer beyond expectation”. The cylinder was then taken down and conveyed to the Scilly Isles, where there was urgent need of a new light at St. Agnes, on the islands' extreme south-westerly edge – but, Lowestoft got its own example of the improved mechanism soon afterwards. At the time, the oil used to fuel the lamps would have mainly been that extracted from whale-blubber. 

Various improvements in lighthouse operation ensued over the years, with oil-burning lamps providing the illumination – a technology which was still in use when the lighthouse seen today was built in 1873 (two feet higher than its predecessor), along with its three accompanying keepers’ cottages. However, a link with the past was kept in the form of the Trinity House coat of arms set into the structure of 1676, which was then incorporated into the composite elevation of light and cottages, at first-floor level, facing on to the meeting-point of Yarmouth Road and the High Street. The new facility began to function on 16 February 1874, with paraffin being adopted as fuel for illumination, and this remained in use until 1936, when the lighthouse switched over to electrical power (Trinity House cites this year, whereas other sources say 1938).  It continued to be manned until 1975, when it became automatically controlled from the Trinity House Planning Centre in Harwich. It gives a white flash every fifteen seconds and is visible (in good weather conditions) from twenty-three miles out at sea. The lighthouse itself and its integral cottages carry a Grade II listing from Historic England and constitute an important group of buildings, both on the level and from below, at the northern end of the old town.

The companion Lowlight, located down on the Denes or beach (according to what forces were being exerted by wind and waves) also changed in nature over the years. According to Edmund Gillingwater (pp. 71-2), the Stanford Channel had moved so far to the north by the year 1735 that it had become impossible to align the earlier brazier-device (or whatever it was) with the main lighthouse itself, in order to give safe passage into Lowestoft’s anchorage. Its location at the time was in line with Swan Score (Mariner’s Score) and Gillingwater refers to it as “being incapable of being brought on a line with the upper light-house”. But he gives no detailed explanation of why this was the case and simply goes on to say that a “moveable light-house, framed of timber, was erected on the beach below the cliff, whose construction was such as to admit of its being removed according as the channel should happen to change its situation”. He also says, in a footnote, that by the year 1779, the timber was found to have rotted and that another Lowlight of the same construction was made to replace it.

Drawings made of this by Richard Powles (1784) and Isaac Johnson (1820) have survived - the former in the Isaac Gillingwater manuscript, ‘Drawings Illustrative of the History of Lowestoft, Mutford and Lothingland’ (Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, 193/2/1), and the latter in a de luxe edition of Edmund Gillingwater’s An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft. Both of the Gillingwaters were the sons of a Lowestoft barber and wig-maker (also Edmund) and the family home was on the north side of Tyler’s Lane (Compass Street). They followed their father into the same trade, with Isaac (1732-1813) eventually taking over from his father. Edmund (1736-1813) moved to Norwich c. 1755 and then to Harleston in 1761, where he established himself as a stationer and bookseller.  He is buried there with his wife in Redenhall churchyard. Both of the brothers were keen antiquarians, with the older one producing a fine, three-volume, handwritten manuscript history of c. 1800 entitled ‘A History of Lowestoft and Lothingland’ (Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, 193/1/1-3), for the possible publication of which his collection of illustrations may well have been assembled. The work never went into print, but it seems likely that Edmund drew upon his older brother’s material as the latter gathered it (and with his permission) to produce his own published work of 1790. It also seems both coincidental and ironic that the two siblings died in the same year and, with their joint decease, the Gillingwater family line came to an end.

Richard Powles (1763-1807) was a native of Lowestoft, who had started work at the town’s porcelain factory as a child and continued there into adulthood. He then spent a few years, during the later 1780s, travelling between England and Denmark – even staying in Helsingfors (Elsinore) from time to time, where an uncle, John Diston, had business interests – before moving to London in the early 1790s and becoming a merchant there. Isaac Johnson (1722-1780) was a surveyor from Woodbridge – a fine draughtsman, who produced many studies of Suffolk churches and other ancient buildings. Both of these men’s representations of the Lowlight agree very closely in showing an octagonal, three-stage structure set on a heavy square frame, with horizontal and diagonal braces reinforcing the tapering uprights and with the lighthouse itself occupying the floored topmost section. Of elongated form, and with the cross-braced vertical supports reaching about halfway up it, it was of octagonal form and accessed by a ladder. It was clad in horizontal planking and there must have been a ladder inside it, to have reached the light itself. This was set within a cupola-like structure complete with weather-vane, at the very top, glazed on the seaward side, which was also fronted by a parapet to allow cleaning of the glass from the outside. The lights themselves, whether of candle or oil, would have been enhanced by reflectors.

The way that this structure was moved must have been with the aid of horses and rollers and it remained in operation up until 1866 or 67 (accounts differ), when it was succeeded by a metal replacement (steel and iron), supported on eight tubular legs, and set on rails embedded into the beach to create mobility if and when needed. As well as the oil-burning light, it also had a fog-warning bell, which sounded at five-minute intervals. Conversion from whale-oil to paraffin was undergone in 1874 (to mesh in with the same introduction as that of the main lighthouse), with coal-gas being used from 1899 onwards – the latter a convenient change as the town’s gasworks was located in close proximity to it. In 1923, after having served for over 300 years, the Lowlight’s existence finally came to an end, mainly because of the Stanford Channel’s unpredictability and improved warning buoyage of the offshore sandbanks.

CREDIT: David Butcher