Qualla: Eddystone Lighthouse

Eddystone Lighthouse: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Johnson [1], CC BY-SA 3.0. Henry Winstanley was a Restoration showman - a manufacturer of mechanical toys and clockwork wonders, a designer of waterworks, a man who loved to astonish people. He owned a hat with a feather and he made his money entertaining London society. In 1696 he started building the world's first open-ocean lighthouse on a half-submerged reef twelve miles south-west of Plymouth, where ships had been wrecking for centuries. By 1699 his light was working. In late November 1703, he travelled out from shore to make repairs, and he was inside his lighthouse when the Great Storm of 1703 hit - the worst meteorological event in English recorded history. By morning nothing was left of either the tower or the men inside it. The reef was empty again. The work began again.

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Image: David Johnson [1] | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eddystone Lighthouse: Winstanley's Octagon

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Eddystone Rocks lie nine sea miles south-west of Rame Head in Cornwall, a submerged reef of Precambrian gneiss that disappears under spring tides. Twelve miles from Plymouth Sound - one of the most important naval harbours of England - the reef sat directly across the approac...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Eddystone Lighthouse: Rudyard's Cone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Samuel Smiles, Public domain. Captain John Lovett bought the lease of the rocks and commissioned John Rudyard - a silk merchant who had never built anything like this before - to design the replacement. Rudyard's lighthouse, completed in 1709, was the opposite of Winstanley's. Where the first had been ornamen...

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Image: Samuel Smiles | Public domain

Eddystone Lighthouse: Smeaton's Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The third Eddystone Lighthouse was a turning point in engineering. After Rudyard's tower burned, Robert Weston asked the Earl of Macclesfield - President of the Royal Society - for advice on rebuilding. Macclesfield recommended John Smeaton, a Yorkshire instrument-maker turned ci...

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Image: Public domain

Eddystone Lighthouse: Douglass's Tower

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J N Douglass, Public domain. James Douglass - engineer-in-chief of Trinity House and one of the great Victorian lighthouse builders - designed the fourth and current Eddystone Lighthouse, which began operation in 1882. Douglass's tower is built of granite, 49 metres high, containing 62,133 cubic feet of ston...

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Image: J N Douglass | Public domain

Eddystone Lighthouse: The Most Famous of All Lighthouses

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Herman Melville mentions Eddystone twice in Moby-Dick. The English pop group Edison Lighthouse took its name from the rock - though they later dropped 'Lighthouse' and called themselves Edison. The third chapter of Mary Ellen Chase's 1965 book The Story of Lighthouses is titled '...

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Image: Public domain