A Visit to the Eddystone Lighthouse.
By F. G. Kitton.
F all lighthouses that surround our coast the most familiar is the noble structure which proudly rears its head above the dangerous Eddystone rock. The story of that interesting building and its predecessors on this extensive reef is enhanced by a touch of romance which makes it worth the telling, and is deserving of record if only as an illustration of man's perseverance, and of his determination to overcome almost insuperable difficulties. Everyone knows that the present lighthouse was preceded by those to which I shall briefly allude, but it is not common knowledge that the earliest intimation (to be found in contemporary records) of a lighthouse on the Eddystone dates back as far as 1664, when (says a writer in the Morning Post) the proposal was made by Sir John Coryton and Henry Brunker, but nothing further has transpired regarding the scheme.
The Eddystone lighthouse—Storm.
The first lighthouse was built by Henry Winstanley, an Essex gentleman, whose eccentricities were combined with great mechanical ingenuity, who began his difficult task in 1696, and completed it four years later. It was a wooden structure of the most fantastic kind, entrance to the various rooms being obtained by means of external ladders. Beneath the lantern (which was surmounted by a huge vane, supported by ornamental scroll work) was a dome or cupola resting on an open arcade with a gallery, and under the latter were the living and store rooms. This quaint design is preserved in the form of a large silver model of contemporary workmanship, which once formed part of the well-known Morgan collection of family plate; it was intended to serve as a table ornament, or for use as a salt-cellar and spice-box, and is curious as being probably the only accurate model in silver of a structure of any kind.
Soon after Winstanley completed this lighthouse he discovered that it was not substantial enough to withstand violent storms and the fury of the waves, and he therefore altered it considerably, the second design being much more ornate in character; the tower was partly circular and partly polygonal, was mainly constructed of wood (with Latin and English inscriptions on some of the panels), and had open galleries and numerous whimsical projections, while an old engraving indicates that candles were placed outside the lantern. It being intimated to the architect
