Longships, Cornwall: the experience of spending a stormy night in a lighthouse

Lighthouses are one of the most fascinating constructions, as they are often located in extreme and highly exposed places.

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Lately, we've had a lot of storms on the North Atlantic coast of Europe. Experiencing one in a house that's somewhat exposed is quite an experience: it's like having a ghost banging on your blinds from the outside all night long, sometimes like a fury that makes a huge impression.

The United Kingdom has some of the most exposed lighthouses in the world. Located on small islets, these lighthouses must withstand storms in which waves can crash over the tops of their towers, causing damage that is not easy to repair today, since most of these lighthouses have been automated for decades and no one lives in them anymore. However, being uninhabited does not mean that no one visits them, as they undergo regular maintenance.

More than 60 British lighthouses are maintained by Trinity House, an organization founded in 1514 that is responsible for the upkeep of lighthouses in England, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the colony of Gibraltar, in Spain. The Northern Lighthouse Board manages the lighthouses in Scotland and the Isle of Man, while the Commissioners of Irish Lights is responsible for the lighthouses in Northern Ireland.

One of the lighthouses built and maintained by Trinity House is Longships Lighthouse in Cornwall. This lighthouse is located about 2 kilometers from Land's End (Penn an Wlas in Cornish; it's like the English Finisterre). This lighthouse was built in 1873, replacing a shorter tower built in 1795. The original tower was built on an islet known as Carn Bras, the largest of the Longships islets, which gives the lighthouse its name and forms a rocky reef against which many ships have crashed throughout history, to the point that locals made a living by looting shipwrecks, a practice known in England as "wrecking," according to the Trinity House.

The original tower was 24 meters high and had three floors (the lower one for water and fuel tanks, the middle one as a living room, and the upper one for bedrooms) where four lighthouse keepers lived. The lighthouse had a lantern made of wood and copper, but waves routinely crashed over it, as the sea in that area can be very rough. This led to the construction of the current tower, designed by Sir James Douglass, chief engineer of Trinity House.

The Longships Lighthouse is a 35-meter-high conical granite tower. Its shape is very common among British lighthouses located in more exposed positions. The lighthouse was electrified in 1967, and in 1974 a helipad was built at its summit to avoid having to access the building by boat, a very dangerous practice. In 1988, the lighthouse was automated, and its last keepers left, never to return. Since 1996, it has been monitored from the Trinity House Planning Centre in Harwich, Essex. In 2005, solar panels were added to power its lantern and the rest of its systems.

Yesterday, the YouTube channel @keeping_a_lighthouse, edited by a Trinity House employee, published an interesting video of a 12-day maintenance visit to the lighthouse, during which Storm Goretti passed through, bringing heavy waves and wind gusts of up to 144 km/h. In the video, you can see the turbulent night the maintenance technicians experienced during the storm and the damage it caused to the lighthouse, as despite its great height, the waves crashed over the top of the tower:

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Main image: @keeping_a_lighthouse.