Dungeness Lighthouses

 This is the Old Lighthouse at Dungeness in Kent.  Built in 1904, it is properly known as the High Light Tower and is 41 metres high. It was originally painted in black and white stripes, to make it highly visible in daylight, even in poor weather conditions.

The High Light Tower, 1904. Behind is the accommodation
 block built around the base of Samuel Wyatt's 1792 Tower.

Although called the old lighthouse, it is far from the original one. The history of lights at Dungeness is documented back to 1600 and probably goes back further. Dungeness is part of a huge strand of sand and shingle, many miles long, which stretches from Dymchurch in the east to Camber Sands in the west and is backed by the marshlands of Romney, Denge and Walland. At Dungeness the shingle forms a low, pointed promontory out into the sea which is extremely dangerous to shipping, hence the lighthouses.

The problem with Dungeness is that it moves. The sea, powered by currants and winter storms, is constantly shifting the sand and shingle eastwards, a process known as longshore drift. To the east, the town of Romney, once situated on the estuary of the river Rother, was left inland and became Old Romney. The port of New Romney, one of the original Cinque Ports, was also left behind and is now more than three kilometres from the sea.

There have been five light-towers at Dungeness. The first, probably a 10 metre high wooden tower illuminated by a coal fire, appeared soon after 1600, built by landowner Edward Hayman who intended it to be a 'tollgate' to earn him revenue as much as a warning to sailors. He was licenced by King James for forty years to collect one penny per ton from all passing ships. The light was poor and the whole scheme proved hugely controversial and difficult to manage. While people argued, the shingle moved.

In 1635 the tower was demolished and the Lamplough Tower, about 30 metres tall, was constructed in brick, nearer to the end of the shingle point. Disputes over revenues, the quality of the light and even the ownership of the tower continued for a hundred and more years. Ownership and overall responsibility for all lighthouses was eventually taken over by Trinity House in 1836. They today are responsible for 65 lighthouses around the British coast and as far afield as Europa Point, Gibraltar

In 1792 the third tower was built by Samuel Wyatt, with accommodation for the keepers in a circular block around its base. This superior light was powered by oil and used the new technology of parabolic reflectors. By 1862 another new technology was tried, electric light, though the supply was not up to the job and it was soon replaced by a much more powerful petrol lamp, its strength increased 100 fold with glass prisms.

By the end of the nineteenth century the shingle had moved again and Wyatt's 35 metre tall tower was replaced by the 41 metre, brick-built, High Light Tower in 1904. Wyatt's tower was demolished, though the accommodation block remained. Today the High Light Tower is more than 500 metres from the sea.


My 1966 photograph of the new Lighthouse. The car in the
foreground was our VW Variant Estate. Behind it are a Ford
Anglia, a Morris Minor Countryman and a VW Microbus.

The 1966 tower was built 450 metres eastward, away from the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station which had partially screened the view of the High Light Tower from the sea. The new tower is an automatic lighthouse, with an electric fog siren, owned by Trinity House. This 43 metre high light-tower, which perhaps can't strictly be called a lighthouse because nobody lives there, was the first concrete tower at Dungeness. It was constructed from pre-cast rings and the distinctive black bands were impregnated into the concrete rings. 

I first visited Dungeness Lighthouse when I was in my teens and the new lighthouse was brand new and had a circular ramp up to the base of the tower which we could walk up. The place was windswept, as always. I had just received a camera, my first, for my birthday - a Kodak Instamatic. These were amongst the first photographs I ever took, on the same roll are pictures of my family and our dog. So it seems that even then I was attracted to buildings as photographic subjects.