Qualla: Trwyn Du Lighthouse

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. The words painted on the tower's north and south faces are unambiguous. NO PASSAGE LANDWARD. The narrow channel between Trwyn Du Lighthouse and Puffin Island looks tempting from a small boat, especially when the open water beyond Penmon Point is rough, but the seabed between is a trap of unmarked rocks and shifting sands. The lighthouse, completed in 1838, was built to keep ships from making exactly that mistake, after a paddle steamer carrying day-trippers from Liverpool had run aground on the Lavan Sands seven years earlier and a hundred and thirty people had died.

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Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: Why It Stands Here

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alistair young, CC BY 2.0. Liverpool's shipmasters had been asking for a light at Penmon for years. The traffic into and out of the Mersey passed close to the eastern tip of Anglesey, and the combination of strong tides, the Lavan Sands drying for square miles at low water, and the narrow funnel between th...

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Image: Alistair young | CC BY 2.0

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: Walker's Engineering

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lighthouse stands twenty-nine metres tall and rises in stages, the lower courses splayed out into a stepped base designed to break the upsurge of waves before they could batter the main walls. Earlier sea towers on similar sites had suffered structural damage from water hamme...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: The Light Itself

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Reading Tom from Reading, UK, CC BY 2.0. The original light source was a four-wick Argand lamp set within a first-order fixed catadioptric optic made by Isaac Cookson and Co. It showed a fixed red light, a colour that distinguishes hazard markers from major coastal lights in the standard navigational code. Joseph Steer,...

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Image: Reading Tom from Reading, UK | CC BY 2.0

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: An Unsuccessful Water Closet

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walker tried to give the lighthouse keepers a modern convenience that the lighthouse keepers would not have appreciated. He fitted what he called a primitive water closet, with a drain exiting at the base of the tower at the high tide line. The stepped lower courses, in theory, w...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Trwyn Du Lighthouse: Getting There

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve F, CC BY-SA 2.0. Penmon Point is accessible by car from Beaumaris, through Llangoed, along a road that turns into a private toll route for the last stretch to the lighthouse. The toll is small. The parking is closer to the lighthouse than the free parking at Dinmor, about a mile back, where there...

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Image: Steve F | CC BY-SA 2.0