The Influence of Charity on Early Coast Lighting

Ancient civilizations protected navigation through lighthouses, which were high columns with fires of wood in open grates or lamps lit by oil placed on their summits^[1]. These structures were similar in style, though smaller in scale, to the tower of white marble erected at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus^[1]. This tower, built nearly three centuries before Christ, cost around £170,000 of our money^[1]. Despite differing opinions on who financed this project, evidence points to Ptolemy as its projector^[1]. The architect, Sostratos of Guidos, inscribed his name on the tower but concealed it under a layer of cement, desiring perpetual recognition^[1]. Time revealed his inscription, acknowledging his skill in benefiting sailors and travelers^[1].

While the concept of warning signals predates Christianity, the focus shifts to England, where there is little evidence of lighthouses before the Roman occupation^[1]. Following the decline of Roman power, lighthouses likely fell into ruin and were not revived until Christianity firmly established itself, teaching charity toward fellow men^[1]. By the 14th century, monks and hermits in England and other maritime parts of Europe warned mariners of dangers around monasteries or hermitages using lights maintained during darkness^[1].

On the largest of the Ecrehou rocks, a hermitage or priory existed in 1309, served from the Norman abbey of Val Richer^[1]. Land in Jersey supported two monks who sang masses for shipwrecked souls and kindled a bright light nightly^[1]. Ruined chapels on rocky crags or headlands likely served as lighthouses for mariners of old^[1]. The maintenance of sea lights was a religious office in medieval England^[1]. From the hermitage chapel on Chale Down, a light had been kept nightly by monks for over five hundred years^[1]. In 1427, a hermit at Ravenspurn built a lighthouse to warn vessels entering the Humber^[1]. Additionally, the priests of St. Nicholas chapel in Ilfracombe maintained a fire of wood throughout the winter, guiding ships into port^[1].

In one instance, coast lighting was performed by a religious guild, the Brethren of the Blessed Trinity of Newcastle-upon-Tyne^[1]. In 1537, Henry VIII entrusted this guild with the navigation of the Tyne, including building and maintaining two towers with lights^[1]. Prior to the religious changes in Henry VIII’s reign, coast lighting was a work of Christian charity^[1]. Traditions associate towers or steeples of parish churches on the coast with having once been lighthouses, such as Blakeney in Norfolk and Boston^[1]. The dissolution of the monasteries swept away the men who tended these coast lights and confiscated the property that maintained them^[1]. Leland found few coast lights remaining after the dissolution^[1].

The coast was well lit prior to the dissolution, with lighthouses of some kind not uncommon^[1]. The writer of The Pilgrimage of Perfection in 1526 speaks of the beacon directing the mariner to port, suggesting the importance of these lights^[1]. After the dissolution, most of these lights were extinguished^[1]. The lack of lighthouses was keenly felt by sailors who then began to pay for the service^[1]. One of the earliest post-reformation lighthouses suggested was that at Winterton in 1585, proposed to be maintained upon the steeple and supported by contributions^[1].