The High lighthouse or pillar

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

is one of three lighthouses in

Burnham-on-Sea Burnham-on-Sea is a seaside town in Somerset, England, at the mouth of the River Parrett, upon Bridgwater Bay. Burnham was a small fishing village until the late 18th century when it began to grow because of its popularity as a seaside resort. ...

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, England. A Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, it is no longer functional as a lighthouse and has been converted for use as a private dwelling.

Location

Burnham-on-Sea is notable for its beach and

mudflats Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal ...

, which are characteristic of

Bridgwater Bay Bridgwater Bay is on the Bristol Channel, north of Bridgwater in Somerset, England at the mouth of the River Parrett and the end of the River Parrett Trail. It stretches from Minehead at the southwestern end of the bay to Brean Down in the ...

and the rest of the

Bristol Channel The Bristol Channel (, literal translation: "Severn Sea") is a major inlet in the island of Great Britain, separating South Wales (from Pembrokeshire to the Vale of Glamorgan) and South West England (from Devon to North Somerset). It extends ...

where the tide can recede for over . Burnham is close to the estuary of the

River Parrett The River Parrett is a river that flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England, from its source in the Thorney Mills springs in the hills around Chedington in Dorset. Flowing northwest through Somerset and the So ...

where it flows into the Bristol Channel, which has the second highest

tidal range Tidal range is the difference in height between high tide and low tide. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and Sun, by Earth's rotation and by centrifugal force caused by Earth's prog ...

in the world of , second only to the

Bay of Fundy The Bay of Fundy () is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its tidal range is the highest in the world. The bay was ...

Eastern Canada Eastern Canada (, also the Eastern provinces, Canadian East or the East) is generally considered to be the region of Canada south of Hudson Bay/ Hudson Strait and east of Manitoba, consisting of the following provinces (from east to west): Newf ...

. The constantly shifting sands have always been a significant risk to shipping in the area.

History

The pillar or High Lighthouse was designed and built by Joseph Nelson for

Trinity House The Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond, also known as Trinity House (and formally as The Master, Wardens and Assistants of the Guild Fraternity or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity and of St Clement in the ...

, and was first lit on 1 December 1832. It was equipped with four oil lamps, which shone through a window set behind a half-gallery on the uppermost storey (at a focal height of above

mean high water springs A chart datum is the water surface serving as origin (or coordinate surface) of depths displayed on a nautical chart and for reporting and predicting tide heights. A chart datum is generally derived from some tidal phase, in which case it is ...

). The High lighthouse was designed to be used in conjunction with a new Low lighthouse, which was commissioned on the same date (and is still operating as of 2020). These new lights replaced the original Round Tower Lighthouse (which itself had been built to replace the light kept burning in the tower of St Andrews Church to guide fishing boats into the harbour); it was decommissioned on the same day that the new lights were brought into service.Notice to Mariners, Trinity House, London, 28 November 1832. The ground floor of the High lighthouse was in diameter and the top room . Cottages at the base of the tower provided accommodation for the keepers who attended the two lights. The High Lighthouse was painted plain white, initially, and the Low Lighthouse was white with a black vertical stripe on the seaward side. In 1890, in order to make the lighthouses more conspicuous by day, a red vertical stripe was added to the High Lighthouse and the colour of the stripe on the Low Lighthouse was altered, likewise, to red.

Early operation

Burnham High and Burnham Low initially functioned as

leading lights Leading lights, also known as range lights in the United States, are a pair of light beacons used in navigation to indicate a safe passage for vessels entering a shallow or dangerous channel; they may also be used for position fixing. At nigh ...

for vessels entering the River Parrett. In 1839, the lighthouses in line were described as indicating the way through a narrow entrance channel to the river, which lay between extensive mud flats: Berrow Flats to the north, Stert Flats to the south. As early as April 1844, however, Trinity House issued a notice warning that the Gore Sand (at the southernmost tip of Berrow Flats) had extended itself in a southerly direction to such an extent that the two lighthouses in line no longer indicated the deep water passage between the flats. The High light was visible for , and was given an arc of visibility north of the line of transit, so as to provide a fix for vessels navigating between the Culver Sand and Steepholm (two hazards in the middle of the Bristol Channel). The Low light was visible for , and as such the two lights in line also served to provide a safe line of approach for vessels navigating up the Bristol Channel from the direction of

Foreland Point Foreland Point is a rocky headland in Devon near Lynmouth, and is the most northerly point along the Devon and Exmoor Exmoor () is loosely defined as an area of hilly open moorland in west Somerset and north Devon in South West Englan ...

and

Minehead Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the boundary with the county of Devon and close to the Exmoor National Park. T ...

. South of this line the High light was 'masked'. In contrast to the fixed light of the Low lighthouse, the High lighthouse displayed an 'intermittent' (i.e.

occulting An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks f ...

) light (being bright for three-and-a-half minutes, then obscured for thirty seconds). At the time, it was the only Trinity House lighthouse listed as having an intermittent (as opposed to either fixed or revolving) light, this new

light characteristic A light characteristic is all of the properties that make a particular somewhat navigational light identifiable. Graphical and textual descriptions of navigational light sequences and colours are displayed on nautical charts and in Light Lists ...

having first been introduced at Scotland's

Tarbat Ness Lighthouse The Tarbat Ness Lighthouse is located at the North West tip of the Tarbat Ness peninsula near the Scottish fishing industry, fishing village of Portmahomack on the east coast of Scotland. It was built in 1830 by Robert Stevenson (civil engineer) ...

in 1830. The means of providing the High light's intermittent character was described in 1861 as a clockwork mechanism which raised and lowered a shutter behind the light-room window so as to obscure the light for 30 seconds every four minutes. At the time the light source was four fixed

Argand lamp The Argand lamp is a type of oil lamp invented in 1780 by Aimé Argand. Its output is 6 to 10 candelas, brighter than that of earlier lamps. Its more complete combustion of the candle wick and oil than in other lamps required much less frequen ...

s, with 21-inch

parabolic reflectors A parabolic (or paraboloid or paraboloidal) reflector (or dish or mirror) is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generated ...

. The mechanism for eclipsing the light had been transferred to the High Light from the old lighthouse, which had latterly displayed a similar intermittent light. In 1884 the High light was upgraded and its occulting characteristic was altered to two two-second eclipses every minute.

Automation and upgrade

When electricity was brought to Burnham in 1927 a 1000-watt

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, also known as an incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe, is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a #Filament, filament until it incandescence, glows. The filament is enclosed in a ...

was installed in each lighthouse (replacing the paraffin vapour burners then in use) which rendered the keepers redundant. (Burnham was the first Trinity House lighthouse in England to be converted from staffed to unstaffed automatic operation, following the automation of their lighthouses at Trwyn Du and St Tudwal's Island in Wales five years earlier.) A

submarine cable Submarine cable is any electrical cable that is laid on the seabed, although the term is often extended to encompass cables laid on the bottom of large freshwater bodies of water. Examples include: *Submarine communications cable *Submarine power ...

was laid between the two lighthouses and the characteristics of the two lights were synchronised (being controlled by a 'motor driven character machine' installed in the High lighthouse, which controlled both light circuits together). Both lights were given an occulting characteristic, the Low light occulting every 2.5 seconds, the High light every 5 seconds. In each location the lamp was set within a sectional fixed

optic Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

, backed by a

dioptric Dioptrics is the branch of optics dealing with refraction, especially by lenses. In contrast, the branch dealing with mirrors is known as ''catoptrics''. Telescopes that create their image with an objective that is a convex lens ( refractors) are ...

mirror. An automatic lamp changer was provided: in the event of a lamp failure the spare bulb was brought into operation and if it also failed an acetylene lamp would be automatically lit. As of 2 December 1969, the characteristic of the High light was altered to one white flash every 7.5 seconds. At the same time, a subsidiary

sector light A sector light is a man-made pilotage and position fixing aid that consists of strictly delineated horizontal angle light beams to guide water-borne traffic through a safe channel at night in reasonable visibility. Sector lights are most often ...

was introduced, shown from a lower window in the same tower (focal height: ) to indicate the correct bearing for the deep-water channel; it was a fixed light with red, white and green sectors. The new sector light rendered the Low lighthouse surplus to requirements and it was therefore deactivated on the same date.

Decommissioning and sale

On 31 December 1993, however, the Low lighthouse was brought back into commission (and given the same white flashing light and subsidiary sector light), meaning that the High lighthouse was, in turn, deactivated. The following year, Burnham High Lighthouse was put up for sale by Trinity House. It was bought by a member of the

Rothschild family The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish noble banking family originally from Frankfurt. The family's documented history starts in 16th-century Frankfurt; its name is derived from the family house, Rothschild, ...

, who owned it until 1996 when it was bought at auction by Patrick O'Hagan. Conversion for residential use included the removal of the 6th floor and the construction of stairs where there had previously only been ladders. In 2018, having once more been put up for sale, the lighthouse was bought 'by an anonymous buyer'. The

Fresnel lens A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens (optics), lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections. The simpler Dioptrics, d ...

and

prism PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD . PRISM collects stored internet ...

panels which formerly made up the optic in the light-room remain preserved in the tower as a constituent part of its Grade II listing. The red stripe on the building is still used, in conjunction with that on the Low lighthouse, as a leading mark.

References

External links

Lighthouses for Sale: photo selection.
* ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlRz9sCYL_w Video: tour of the lighthouse filmed prior to its decommissioning. {{authority control Lighthouses completed in 1832 Lighthouses in Somerset Grade II listed buildings in Sedgemoor Grade II listed lighthouses Burnham-on-Sea