Post by racingteatray on Jan 27, 2020 11:55:10 GMT
Sometimes you read something in the papers that whilst not a human tragedy nevertheless makes you feel sad and nostalgic, and aware of the passing of the years. A little memory from your past that you'd almost forgotten.
Today there was an article in The Times about the imminent loss to the North Sea of the Orford Lighthouse:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-last-days-of-a-beacon-that-defied-the-tide-of-history-5v6fpnvc8
"For 228 years it has weathered storms and hurricanes. It stood firm against strafing by German warplanes and incoming doodlebugs and even survived the testing of bombs and nuclear detonators. Now the Orford Ness lighthouse in Suffolk is facing a foe that it cannot defeat: the North Sea’s relentless erosion of that desolate, ten-mile shingle spit.
When built in 1792 the 100ft tower stood several hundred yards from the sea. Now, when the winds are strong and tides are high, the waves wash around its base, attacking its very foundations.
The grade II listed building is roped off and ringed by danger signs. The earth beneath its porch has vanished, leaving the doorway suspended over space. The lighthouse keeper’s cottage was swept away during a storm in early November. The whitewashed stone hut where barrels of sperm whale oil were once stored hangs over the lip of the beach, ready to slide into the sea at any moment. “The lighthouse is doomed,” Nicholas Gold, a former corporate lawyer who lives in nearby Orford village and bought the decommissioned lighthouse from Trinity House in 2013 for £2,000, said.
Unless he can safely demolish it first, one big storm could now bring it down. “It’s a matter of when, not if,” he said as a seal poked its head out of the gunmetal grey sea behind him. “It could be months. It could be weeks. It depends entirely on the weather.”
The iconic red-and-white striped lighthouse, one of Britain’s oldest, was the most substantial and enduring of eleven such structures that had been erected on the Ness since 1637 to protect mariners off the hazardous Suffolk coast. It can be seen from as far away at Southwold to the north and Felixstowe to the south, and its light was visible 25 miles out to sea.
Public access ended after the military commandeered the Ness during the First World War for testing planes, and later rockets, bombs and radar, but the London North Eastern Railway company still used the lighthouse on posters designed to attract visitors to East Anglia in the 1930s.
The Ministry of Defence sold the Ness, still strewn with sinister bunkers and buildings, to the National Trust in 1993. Trinity House decommissioned the lighthouse in 2011. When Mr Gold bought it two years later it stood just 60 feet from the shore, and he knew its days were numbered. But he said that he would rather spend his money on a lighthouse than a Range Rover, and wanted the public — particularly local people who had admired it from a distance all their lives — to enjoy it before it went.
That first winter a huge storm washed away half the remaining foreshore. In 2015 volunteers sandbagged the lighthouse, buying it a little more time. Over the past seven years thousands of visitors have climbed its 113 steps and enjoyed breathtaking views from the top. Mr Gold even held summer concerts there but he was forced to close it for good on January 2 this year.
He now wants to demolish it for safety and environmental reasons. That would be a formidable task — the lighthouse is far from any road, built from 400,000 bricks and its lantern room alone weighs 13 tonnes — but East Anglia’s largest demolition company has offered to do it within his £50,000 budget. “It’s part of our heritage, and if we can help Nicholas take it down and salvage some of that history too we want to be part of that,” Lee Storer, owner of Anglian Demolition and Asbestos, said.
There may no longer be time, though. Once dedicated to destruction, the Ness is now a national nature reserve and site of special scientific interest. Demolishing the lighthouse would require impact assessments and the authorisation of diverse bodies including the local council, Natural England, Historic England and the Marine Maritime Organisation. It may topple into the sea long before Mr Gold can secure those.
“It will be very sad when the lighthouse goes. I’m going to need counselling,” he said.
The villagers of Orford agree. As a child Mark Thacker, now 56, fell asleep watching its beam sweeping across his bedroom wall. “I don’t think people will realise until its gone how much they’ll miss it. It’s the first thing you see when you look across the fields. It’s like an old friend,” he said.
Mr Gold’s only consolation is that he still owns another remarkable building on the Ness — a huge, windowless American Cold War radar station called Cobra Mist that once tracked missile launches in the Soviet Union".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orfordness_Lighthouse
The comment from Mr Thacker resonated particularly, for my mother's family home was in a neighbouring village in sight of the Ness and I too have childhood memories of watching the beam of the Orford lighthouse sweep past the dormer window of my bedroom at night as a reminder of the proximity of the sea and whilst the lighthouse last worked nearly a decade ago, there's something indefinably sad about the thought of the lighthouse not being there, just because it's the sort of constant presence that as a child it never occurs to you will not be there forever.
Today there was an article in The Times about the imminent loss to the North Sea of the Orford Lighthouse:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-last-days-of-a-beacon-that-defied-the-tide-of-history-5v6fpnvc8
"For 228 years it has weathered storms and hurricanes. It stood firm against strafing by German warplanes and incoming doodlebugs and even survived the testing of bombs and nuclear detonators. Now the Orford Ness lighthouse in Suffolk is facing a foe that it cannot defeat: the North Sea’s relentless erosion of that desolate, ten-mile shingle spit.
When built in 1792 the 100ft tower stood several hundred yards from the sea. Now, when the winds are strong and tides are high, the waves wash around its base, attacking its very foundations.
The grade II listed building is roped off and ringed by danger signs. The earth beneath its porch has vanished, leaving the doorway suspended over space. The lighthouse keeper’s cottage was swept away during a storm in early November. The whitewashed stone hut where barrels of sperm whale oil were once stored hangs over the lip of the beach, ready to slide into the sea at any moment. “The lighthouse is doomed,” Nicholas Gold, a former corporate lawyer who lives in nearby Orford village and bought the decommissioned lighthouse from Trinity House in 2013 for £2,000, said.
Unless he can safely demolish it first, one big storm could now bring it down. “It’s a matter of when, not if,” he said as a seal poked its head out of the gunmetal grey sea behind him. “It could be months. It could be weeks. It depends entirely on the weather.”
The iconic red-and-white striped lighthouse, one of Britain’s oldest, was the most substantial and enduring of eleven such structures that had been erected on the Ness since 1637 to protect mariners off the hazardous Suffolk coast. It can be seen from as far away at Southwold to the north and Felixstowe to the south, and its light was visible 25 miles out to sea.
Public access ended after the military commandeered the Ness during the First World War for testing planes, and later rockets, bombs and radar, but the London North Eastern Railway company still used the lighthouse on posters designed to attract visitors to East Anglia in the 1930s.
The Ministry of Defence sold the Ness, still strewn with sinister bunkers and buildings, to the National Trust in 1993. Trinity House decommissioned the lighthouse in 2011. When Mr Gold bought it two years later it stood just 60 feet from the shore, and he knew its days were numbered. But he said that he would rather spend his money on a lighthouse than a Range Rover, and wanted the public — particularly local people who had admired it from a distance all their lives — to enjoy it before it went.
That first winter a huge storm washed away half the remaining foreshore. In 2015 volunteers sandbagged the lighthouse, buying it a little more time. Over the past seven years thousands of visitors have climbed its 113 steps and enjoyed breathtaking views from the top. Mr Gold even held summer concerts there but he was forced to close it for good on January 2 this year.
He now wants to demolish it for safety and environmental reasons. That would be a formidable task — the lighthouse is far from any road, built from 400,000 bricks and its lantern room alone weighs 13 tonnes — but East Anglia’s largest demolition company has offered to do it within his £50,000 budget. “It’s part of our heritage, and if we can help Nicholas take it down and salvage some of that history too we want to be part of that,” Lee Storer, owner of Anglian Demolition and Asbestos, said.
There may no longer be time, though. Once dedicated to destruction, the Ness is now a national nature reserve and site of special scientific interest. Demolishing the lighthouse would require impact assessments and the authorisation of diverse bodies including the local council, Natural England, Historic England and the Marine Maritime Organisation. It may topple into the sea long before Mr Gold can secure those.
“It will be very sad when the lighthouse goes. I’m going to need counselling,” he said.
The villagers of Orford agree. As a child Mark Thacker, now 56, fell asleep watching its beam sweeping across his bedroom wall. “I don’t think people will realise until its gone how much they’ll miss it. It’s the first thing you see when you look across the fields. It’s like an old friend,” he said.
Mr Gold’s only consolation is that he still owns another remarkable building on the Ness — a huge, windowless American Cold War radar station called Cobra Mist that once tracked missile launches in the Soviet Union".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orfordness_Lighthouse
The comment from Mr Thacker resonated particularly, for my mother's family home was in a neighbouring village in sight of the Ness and I too have childhood memories of watching the beam of the Orford lighthouse sweep past the dormer window of my bedroom at night as a reminder of the proximity of the sea and whilst the lighthouse last worked nearly a decade ago, there's something indefinably sad about the thought of the lighthouse not being there, just because it's the sort of constant presence that as a child it never occurs to you will not be there forever.