Qualla: Les Hanois Lighthouse

Les Hanois Lighthouse: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1817, Trinity House looked at the wrecks piling up off western Guernsey and decided no lighthouse was needed. The Casquets light, they said, was perfectly visible. The Casquets are thirty miles north and cannot be seen from the south coast of the island at all. Forty-five years and many drowned crews later, the engineers finally got around to building Les Hanois Lighthouse on a reef the locals had long since concluded would never stop killing sailors without it.

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Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Les Hanois Lighthouse: The Reef That Refused to Be Ignored

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Man vyi, Public domain. The Hanois reef is a scatter of granite teeth a mile northwest of Pleinmont, on the wildest corner of Guernsey: Le Grand Hanois, Le Petit Hanois, La Percee, Round Rock, La Grosse Rocque, and Le Bisse, the rock that finally got the tower. Atlantic swells climb these stones and bre...

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Image: User:Man vyi | Public domain

Les Hanois Lighthouse: Building on a Rock

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. James Walker designed the tower. Construction ran from 1860 to 1862. Lighting reefs that drown at high tide is its own kind of engineering, and the team building Les Hanois introduced something new: dovetailed granite blocks, an interlocking joint borrowed from carpentry, suggest...

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Image: Man vyi | Public domain

Les Hanois Lighthouse: Life on Le Bisse

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Surgeonsmate at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Keepers and their families lived in cottages at Pleinmont, on the cliff top, while three men at a time held the tower itself. When sea fog rolled in, the bell tolled every fifteen seconds. From 1915 onwards the keepers added an explosive fog signal, a gun-cotton charge swung outs...

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Image: Surgeonsmate at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Les Hanois Lighthouse: What the Light Still Says

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. Today Les Hanois flashes white twice every thirteen seconds, visible to twenty nautical miles. The optic is the second the tower has worn: the original Chance Brothers lens went to a glass museum after a hundred years of service. The funding has reversed too. Guernsey now pays th...

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Image: Man vyi | Public domain