Living in a Lamp Post
“I thought I had a job for life” assistant lighthouse keeper, Portland Bill lighthouse, Aug 1991
In 1990 I bought my first car (a slightly unreliable orange Citroen 2CV) and travelled around the coast of England and Wales photographing the last remaining manned lighthouses. Some lighthouses were situated in isolated mainland areas, whilst others were on remote islands and rocks only reachable by helicopter or local boatman.
My main aim was to look at unique aspects of lighthouse life, the living conditions and to highlight the views of the lighthouse keepers, to comment about their lives, past and present and the part technology has played in these changes. There was a sense of not only inevitability, but sadness, that their way of life would soon be disappearing.
“We slept in curved bunks, on curved mattresses and lived a life of round rooms and spiral staircases.” NORMAN McCANCH from ‘A Lighthouse Notebook’.
These photographs were made between 1990 and 1992. North Foreland was the last Trinity House lighthouse to be automated in November 1998.