Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 34

life FEATURE A history of our Islands lighthouses By June Elford Photo: St Catherines Lighthouse as it stands today. Inset - The Salt Shaker By June Elford P harology, the name for the study of lighthouses, originates from the earliest recorded lighthouse, built on the island of Pharos off the northern coast of Egypt between 283 and 247 BC. There is a pharos at Dover Castle but after the end of the Roman empire, few lighthouses were erected and the earliest medieval lights were made by the church. Today Trinity House is the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales and the Channel Islands. Little is known of its early history but there’s a record of the granting of a Royal Charter by Henry V111 in 1514 to the Guild of the Holy Trinity “so that they might regulate the pilotage of ships in the King’s streams.” On the Isle of Wight we can claim to have the only surviving medieval lighthouse in Britain. St. Catherine’s Oratory, known locally as the Pepper 34 Pot, stands at the southern tip of the island on Chale Down, or ‘Montem de Cheal’, and though the exact date of its building is not known, records show it was there in 1312. Looking like a stone space rocket, the 11 metres high tower has four fin-like buttresses which were added in the 18th century to prevent the tower falling down. Most medieval lighthouses were lit by an open fire but St. Catherine’s Oratory’s light came from a glazed lantern sheltering a small fire or lamp. The eight small windows let out very little light and as the tower was often shrouded in fog, the lighthouse tower was practically of no use to mariners. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1547 the small chantry chapel attached to the tower was dismantled and the stone taken away for building purposes. The chapel was supposed to have been built by Walter de Goditon as a penance for appropriating 174 barrels of white wine destined for a monastery in Picardy on the Ship of Blessed Mary which was wrecked off Chale Bay. Though records show that the owners of the wine brought a lengthy litigation against Walter de Goditon and the other men who pillaged the ship, there is no evidence to support the story that he built the oratory. After more shipwrecks in Chale Bay, a new lighthouse designed by Richard Jupp was started near the Pepper Pot in 1785 but abandoned soon afterwards because of the fog and mists that swirled around the hilltop. Nicknamed the Salt Shaker, the half-built lighthouse and the Pepper Pot are today owned and looked after by the National Trust and English Heritage. It was another shipping disaster in the treacherous waters off Chale Bay in 1836 that led to public demand for a lighthouse to be built at St. Catherine’s Point. Only Island Life - www.isleofwight.net