Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet by Tom Nancollas

Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet by Tom Nancollas

Author:Tom Nancollas [Nancollas, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, History, Architecture, Maritime, United Kingdom, Ireland, Illustrated
ISBN: 9781846149399
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-10-04T00:00:00+00:00


Wolf Rock

A notorious lighthouse

1870,

8 MILES OFF LAND’S END, CORNWALL

‘One consolation is that no-one has yet discovered how to build houses on the sea,’ wrote an exasperated John Betjeman of new housing sprawling over the Cornish countryside that he cherished. As well as being a poet, he was a seasoned campaigner and author of polemics against such spoilage of places. But as he was a keen architectural critic and acolyte of the Victorian period in particular, I think he would have been delighted to be corrected in this case. By 1934, when he made his comments, nearly four centuries’ worth of superlative risk-taking and ingenuity had, indeed, built houses in the sea.

Because lighthouses were positioned so far away from any settlement, the keepers who operated their machinery had to live within them. And, as there was no space on the reefs for conventional outbuildings, their living quarters had to be incorporated into the towers, above the fuel-stores and below the lantern room. Despite the jostling proximity of three men in two or three rooms, their lives are usually characterized as mute and lonely, likened to that of hermits, seemingly the closest forerunners for their idiosyncratic lifestyle.

Out at the country’s edges, they worked shifts that were two months long, with relief boats visiting at these intervals to exchange keepers clocking off with those clocking on. The transfer of these men and their belongings was unbelievably precarious, using a breeches buoy, a zipwire on which they were hauled by their colleagues from the rocking boat up to the slippery entrance ledge. The changeability of the sea meant reliefs were often delayed for weeks or even months – it was simply too dangerous to attempt a landing in anything other than reasonably calm conditions. And all this before they had even commenced work.

Their shifts were spent within rooms fitted with cooking ranges, patterned curtains, china crockery, wireless, perhaps a religious text hung on the wall – all the trappings of domestic normalcy. But these couldn’t completely disguise the cell-like feeling of the spaces, the curved walls and the strong gales and waves that thudded against them. In many of the towers, every article of furniture was curved to follow the walls, most strikingly the bunks in which the men slept. Sometimes, truly extraordinary rooms were created, like the Strangers’ Room at the Bell Rock, with its fashionable rugs, panelling and plasterwork. Such elegance was a surreal thing to find off the storm-lashed Arbroath coastline.

The men had to be all-rounders, capable of dealing with a mercury spillage in one moment and darning a sock in the next. They were trained in housekeeping and DIY as well as in their machines. From dusk until sunrise their nights were divided into watches. In these periods, their sole focus was the light, attending to the complex apparatus keeping the lamp burning and the crystalline optic turning, sounding the fog signal when necessary and watching the sea between times. This they always kept at arm’s length, for they were never taught to swim.



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