“Well, that was a rubbish swing.”
It’s 11:25am on a fresh January morning. Huddled inside the Cromer Lighthouse lantern room, Lighthouse Manager Warren, Technical Manager Chris and Technical Services Manager Rob are assessing the quality of on-going modernisation works. And the quality of the drives by the golfers on the green outside.
The ever-elusive English sun has chosen to grace us and bears down on the golf course, and the 1833 octagonal lighthouse . A modest 18 metres in height and crowned with a 20th century lantern, the tower is flanked by three cottages that once housed keepers and their families.
The bright green doors now welcome holiday-makers to the Norfolk coast and invite visitors to uncover the secrets of its walls. For Cromer was not exempt from the horrors to which lighthouses are susceptible; suspicious deaths, unfortunate drownings, the dreaded missed night shift (to name but a few).
Little is left to remind visitors of the original Cromer Lighthouse (1719) which, in a rather theatrical display, slipped off the cliff-edge in 1866. Before its dramatic plunge into the North Sea, this coal-fired tower had been first tended to by a pair of female keepers who received a pound a week, a whopping £150 in today’s currency.
Before that, fires had been lit on the top of the parish church tower to alert mariners as best small flames could (i.e. not very well).
But today, works are focused on the future! Contractors are busying themselves uprooting metres upon metres of cabling, repositioning battery racks and installing the new navigation light – an LED lamp. Apart from blinding all those standing in the lantern room, this new lamp reduces energy consumption on-site and easily adapts to the character and range required for navigation.
As I scale the internal ladder, I marvel at how the chaos of cables and equipment makes perfect sense to the three engineers. Overseeing the next evolutionary stage of a tower nearing its 200th birthday is no simple feat, but one in ever-capable hands.
As for the capability of the hands holding the golf clubs outside, the less said, the better.