Old Hunstanton Lighthouse is a former lighthouse located in Old Hunstanton in the English county of Norfolk, generally called Hunstanton Lighthouse during its operational life. It was built at the highest point available on this part of the coast, on top of Hunstanton Cliffs, and served to help guide vessels into the safe water of Lynn Deeps. Although the present lighthouse was built in 1840, there had been a lighthouse on the site since the 17th century. Prior to the establishment of the Lynn Well light vessel in 1828, Hunstanton Lighthouse provided the only visible guide to ships seeking to enter The Wash at night.
History
Early lighthouses
In 1663 permission was sought by a consortium of the merchants and ship-owners of Boston and Lynn to erect one or more lights near St Edmund's Point, to help guide their vessels into The Wash. That November, a warrant was issued by Charles II to John Knight, permitting him to build a light or lights 'upon the Hunston-cliffe or chappel lands', and to maintain them by levying dues on passing ships. The first lights, a pair of stone towers which functioned as leading lights, were built by him in 1665, at a cost of over £200. The front light of the pair was candle-lit; the rear had a coal-fired brazier. They were found to be 'of great benefit'. In 1710 it was reported that the lighthouses were 'decayed and want repairing and will admit of great alterations and improvements'. That same year Knight's niece Rebecca and her husband James Everard, a Lynn banker, were granted the right to receive the light dues for the period of the next fifty years. Substantial repairs were undertaken. In the 18th century the lighthouses were sometimes known as the 'Chapel Lights'.
In around 1776 the rear lighthouse of the pair was destroyed by a fire. Its replacement, topped by a glass lantern room, was equipped with parabolic reflectors and oil lamps in place of a coal fire. Hunstanton is said to have been the first lighthouse in the world to be fitted with a parabolic reflector ; it was devised and installed by Ezekiel Walker of Lynn, who later advised the Northern Lighthouse Board on installing parabolic reflectors in their towers around the coast of Scotland. As described in 1812, the light was provided by eighteen lamps set within diameter reflectors 'fixed upon two shelves, one placed over the other'; the lamps were arranged so as to direct the greatest concentration of light in a north by east direction, indicating to far-off vessels a way through sands and shoals off the Lincolnshire coast. Writing some fifty years after they were installed, Walker described them as follows: 'Each of the reflectors at Hunstanton contains 700 small mirrors of looking-glass, every one of which reflects part of the light of the small lamp placed in its focus'. The light was described in 1781 as 'constant and certain' and 'clearly distinguished at sea at a distance of seven leagues'. The two lighthouses are shown on John Cary's county map of 1787; but only one on his map of 1794. 19th-century descriptions only mention the one lighthouse. According to John Purdy it was high, placing the light at above sea level..
Current lighthouse
In 1840 a new lighthouse, designed by James Walker, was built by William Candler of Lynn; it was first lit on 3 September of that year. It was a white-painted cylindrical brick tower, high, which placed the light at an elevation of above sea level; In place of the multiple lamps and reflectors, a single three-wick oil lamp was installed, set within a sizeable fixed catadioptricoptic, designed by J. Cookson & co. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The lighthouse initially displayed a fixed white light as before; but from 1844 a red sector was added to the light, indicating the position of the Roaring Middle shoal. The light had a range of. The new lighthouse was flanked by a pair of two-storey gabled houses for the keepers, which were connected by castellated wingsto the lighthouse itself. The cost of building the tower and the dwellings together came to £2,696 13s 3d. In 1883 Hunstanton Lighthouse was altered to display a group occulting light. In 1897 the tower was repainted red, with a broad white stripe.
Decommissioning
The present lighthouse ceased operations in 1921, and the lantern storey was removed from the top of the tower the following year. To compensate for its closure, improvements were made to the light of the Inner Dowsing lightvessel. In 1922 the lighthouse was sold at auction for £1,300. Between 1934 and 1957 the tower was used as an observation post by the Royal Observer Corps. Since then it has been a private residence and a Holiday Let. The two keepers' houses remained in place until at least the early 1960s, since when one has been demolished, and a modern annexe added to the other.
