Qualla: Trevose Head Lighthouse

Trevose Head Lighthouse: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Herry Lawford from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. Until 1847, a ship rounding the north coast of Cornwall from Land's End could see no lighthouse until it reached Lundy, eighty miles north up the Bristol Channel. The intervening cliffs - Cape Cornwall, Pendeen, Trevose, Hartland - were among the most dangerous on the British coast, and the gap was killing trade. Trevose Head Lighthouse was built to close it. Eighty-nine feet of granite tower, perched on the headland west of Padstow, the light first shone in 1847 and is still operating today. On a clear night its flash can be seen 35 miles south-west at Pendeen Lighthouse, further along the same north Cornish coast near Land's End. The keepers are gone. The light remains.

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Image: Herry Lawford from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

Trevose Head Lighthouse: The Gap That Killed

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0. Trinity House surveyed the site in July 1844 on its own order. The design was submitted in November 1844 and approved that February. Construction began in May 1845 with the laying out of an access road; the building contract was let the following month. The tower's purpose was st...

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Image: Paul Smith | CC BY-SA 4.0

Trevose Head Lighthouse: Douglass and the Occulting Light

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ValP, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1882 the engineer-in-chief of Trinity House, James Douglass - the same Douglass who would build the fourth and current Eddystone Lighthouse a few years later - rationalised Trevose Head. The high light was converted to an occulting light, eclipsed for three seconds three times...

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Image: ValP | CC BY-SA 2.0

Trevose Head Lighthouse: Lord Rayleigh's Trumpet

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1913 a fog signal came into service that the keepers nicknamed Lord Rayleigh's trumpet. It was a five-inch siren attached to a 36-foot-long acoustic horn, designed by John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh - the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who had done foundational work on the scat...

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Image: Paul Smith | CC BY-SA 4.0

Trevose Head Lighthouse: The LED That Replaced the Lens

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trevor Rickard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Trevose Head was automated, like nearly all British lighthouses, in the late twentieth century. The revolving optic that had served from before 1913 - more than 110 years in continuous operation - was removed in 2023 and replaced by a fixed LED lantern that produces the required ...

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Image: Trevor Rickard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Trevose Head Lighthouse: Cottages for Rent

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Evans, Public domain. The former keepers' cottages at Trevose Head, arranged in two semi-detached pairs, are now available as holiday accommodation. People go there for the silence, the wind, the long views across to Padstow and the south down toward Newquay. The old fog horn is silent. The new air ho...

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Image: Benjamin Evans | Public domain