Hurst Point Lighthouse is located at Hurst Point in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county of

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

, and guides vessels through the western approaches to the

Solent The Solent ( ) is a strait between the Isle of Wight and Great Britain. It is about long and varies in width between , although the Hurst Spit which projects into the Solent narrows the sea crossing between Hurst Castle and Colwell Bay to ...

History

The old lights

The original lighthouse was the Hurst Tower, sited to the south west of the old

Hurst Castle Hurst Castle is an artillery fort established by Henry VIII on the Hurst Spit in Hampshire, England, between 1541 and 1544. It formed part of the king's Device Forts coastal protection programme against invasion from France and the Holy Roman ...

and lit for the first time on 29 September 1786.Lighthouses
, hurstcastle.co.uk, retrieved 18 April 2012

Richard Jupp Richard Jupp (1728 – 17 April 1799) was an 18th-century English architect, particularly associated with buildings in and around London. He served for many years (c. 1755 – 1799) as surveyor to the British East India Company. Works His wor ...

was the architect and

Joseph Huddart Joseph Huddart FRS (1741–1816) was a British hydrographer, engineer and inventor. He surveyed harbours and coasts but made a fortune from improving the design and manufacture of rope. He was highly regarded in his time, and his likeness featu ...

supervised and directed its construction, which was undertaken at the same time as the erection of two other lights nearby: one on St Catherine's Down and the other on the clifftop above

The Needles The Needles is a row of three stacks of chalk that rise about out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, United Kingdom, close to Alum Bay and Scratchell's Bay, and part of Totland, the westernmo ...

(it being envisaged that the three would be used in conjunction). The red, brick-built Hurst Tower displayed a fixed white light, but the north-west part of the lantern was 'darkened' to prevent it confusing vessels navigating further along the coast to the west. The Hurst Tower light was found to be obscured behind the Needles from certain directions; consequently, in 1812, this tower was supplemented by the High Lighthouse, a new tower at a higher level. The High Lighthouse, which was designed by Daniel Alexander, was a red, brick-built elliptical tower of an unusual and striking conical design. The two towers together functioned as

leading lights Leading lights (also known as range lights in the United States) are a pair of light beacons used in navigation to indicate a safe passage for vessels entering a shallow or dangerous channel; they may also be used for position fixing. At nigh ...

for vessels approaching through the Needles Channel; both were equipped with three

Argand lamp The Argand lamp is a type of oil lamp invented in 1780 by Aimé Argand. Its output is 6 to 10 candelas, brighter than that of earlier lamps. Its more complete combustion of the candle wick and oil than in other lamps required much less frequent ...

s and reflectors (those in the Low Lighthouse were shown from a lower window in the tower, while a separate lamp in the lantern room above was angled in the opposite direction, to guide vessels navigating along

The Solent The Solent ( ) is a strait between the Isle of Wight and Great Britain. It is about long and varies in width between , although the Hurst Spit which projects into the Solent narrows the sea crossing between Hurst Castle and Colwell Bay to ...

). Each tower had been built with a keeper's cottage attached.

The new lights

In light of the expansion of the Castle between 1865 and 1873, it proved necessary to replace the two lighthouses. In 1865, a new Low Light was built: a white circular granite tower with a red lantern, which was attached to the new curtain wall of the castle; then, in 1867, a new High Light was built to designs by James Douglass: a freestanding 26 metre tower (which, in order to maintain the transit in relation to the channel, was positioned 15 metres to the east of the old High Light). Only the top of the Low Light was visible, but a red screen was positioned outside the walls of the fort as a day-mark, so as to make the tower look 'apparently complete' when the lighthouses were in line. The lights displayed were similar to those of the old towers, but the light directed up the Solent now shone from the High rather than the Low lighthouse. In the 1890s the High Light was provided with a complex new array of fixed

first-order In mathematics and other formal sciences, first-order or first order most often means either: * "linear" (a polynomial of degree at most one), as in first-order approximation and other calculus uses, where it is contrasted with "polynomials of high ...

Fresnel lens A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens developed by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) for use in lighthouses. It has been called "the invention that saved a million ships." The design allows the c ...

es, together with a Douglass-designed six-wick lamp. According to contemporary plans, displayed in the nearby museum in the castle, the 'new' lenses were in fact old lenses reused from elsewhere: one panel 'taken from the first order

dioptric Dioptrics is the branch of optics dealing with refraction, similarly the branch dealing with mirrors is known as catoptrics. Dioptrics is the study of the refraction of light, especially by lenses. Telescopes that create their image with an objec ...

apparatus formerly used at St Catherine's' and one 'taken from the central portion of the old Bishop's Rock apparatus',Photograph of diagrams from the ALK Museum in Hurst Castle
/ref> both of which had been replaced a few years earlier. (Three sets of upper prisms were also re-used from St Catherine's.) One panel was positioned on the south-west side of the lamp and aligned with the Low Light to provide the transit guiding passage through the Needles Channel; the other was positioned on the east side of the lamp to guide vessels approaching via

, with a red

sector Sector may refer to: Places * Sector, West Virginia, U.S. Geometry * Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc * Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc * Spherical sector, a po ...

in addition marking a hazard, Solent Banks. In the intervening arc (i.e. between the outer Needles Rock and

Sconce Point Fort Victoria is a former military fort on the Isle of Wight, England (), built to guard the Solent. The earliest fort on the site was a coastal fort known as Sharpenode Bulwark built in 1545–1547 by Henry VIII of England, Henry VIII, but thes ...

) the faint light of the naked flame of the lamp was left visible (at a later date a much smaller optic was incorporated to cover this arc). Together with the dioptric array, a complex occulting mechanism was installed, which eclipsed the light for two seconds every ten seconds whilst maintaining a fixed light over the arc of the transit with the Low Light. Hurst Point (19930538761)

By 1911, shifting sandbanks had left the Low Light out of line with the channel. It was therefore replaced with a red square metal tower, mounted on steel joists alongside the castle wall to enable it to be moved laterally so as to adjust to future changes. It too was fitted with a first-order lens. By now the towers were lit by

incandescent Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb ''incandescere,'' to glow white. A common use of incandescence is ...

oil burners. In 1923 both lights were automated with the installation of an

acetylene Acetylene (systematic name: ethyne) is the chemical compound with the formula and structure . It is a hydrocarbon and the simplest alkyne. This colorless gas is widely used as a fuel and a chemical building block. It is unstable in its pure ...

lamp controlled by a sun valve, fuelled from an adjacent producer plant. (The producer plant, which generated the gas using rainwater and

calcium carbide Calcium carbide, also known as calcium acetylide, is a chemical compound with the chemical formula of Ca C2. Its main use industrially is in the production of acetylene and calcium cyanamide. The pure material is colorless, while pieces of tec ...

, was decommissioned in 1968; stores of bottled gas were subsequently provided by Trinity House vessels.) Electric power was provided at the lighthouse in 1997. Due to increased use of the shipping lanes, a high-intensity

sector light A sector light is a man-made pilotage and position fixing aid that consists of strictly delineated horizontal angle light beams to guide water-borne traffic through a safe channel at night in reasonable visibility. Sector lights are most often ...

(designed to be seen day and night) was installed in one of the lower seaward-facing windows of the High Lighthouse, adjustable in case of further shifts in the sandbanks and using white, red and green light to mark with precision the narrow passage between the Needles and the Shingles Bank. This removed the need for a leading light, and the Low Light was therefore decommissioned that same year.

Present day

The High Lighthouse is still working today, having been converted from acetylene to electric power in 1997. In addition to the high-intensity sector light, the old dioptric apparatus, with its different focal lengths and red sector, remains in use in the lantern. In November 2020 the main lamp was converted to LED for better reliability, efficiency, lower maintenance and improved visibility. Now known simply as Hurst Point Lighthouse, the tower is open for visitors but cannot be reached by car; access is by foot or boat only. The decommissioned acetylene producers have been preserved ''in situ'' and the old acetylene burner array is displayed at the base of the tower. A small lighthouse-related museum is maintained by the Association of Lighthouse Keepers in the

casemates A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary When referring to antiquity, the term "casemate wall" mea ...

of the castle. Both the 1866 and the 1911 Low Lights, though decommissioned, remain in place: (painted grey to camouflage them and prevent confusion for mariners). The 1911 lantern still contains its old lamp and lens.Photo
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References

External links