The Orfordness Light
When American airmen came back to East Anglia in 1951, they re-activated a former Royal Air Force base called Bentwaters. After establishing themselves and their aircraft, personnel would explore East Suffolk, not only for recreation, but also for suitable off-base housing in the surrounding area. Many discovered the quaint ancient town of Orford, a mere mile and a half from the base. Orford had some fine pubs (selling Adnam's famed Southwold ales), a fine church, a restaurant, a castle, and a fine view of a red and white banded lighthouse guarding the Ness or Nose. Access to the lighthouse was not easy—almost impossible. A visitor had to catch a private ferry over the river Ore to the spit of land on which the lighthouse was built. However this spit of land was strictly off limits because the British Ministry of Defence maintained a research station into nuclear weapon technology on the Ness in the vicinity of the lighthouse. Even so, many American airmen have wondered about the handsome red and with tower with the powerful light that flashed every five seconds. Here is a short history presented for all those personnel of the 81st Wing who, for one reason or another, failed to reach the famous light during their tour of duty at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. Orford Ness, Suffolk (Built 1637 – Still Active) Location: N 52º 05' .0 E 01º 34' .6 2 On Thursday, October 28, 1627, a fast-rising and fearsome storm in the southern North Sea broke out of the northeastern quadrant catching many vessels on an exposed lee shore off East Anglia. When the ebb came away those vessels not driven ashore earlier in the day by the flood were swiftly carried northwards into the night by the spring ebb. A contemporary report said 34 vessels were lost. Most foundered on the shingle beach of Orford Ness amid tumultuous waves. The resulting loss of life, vessels and cargo was tragic and catastrophic. London, East Anglian, and foreign merchants, as well as masters and owners, were galvanized to organize a petition to establish a navigation light on the treacherous Orford Ness. The bailiffs of nearby Aldeburgh corporation lent their not inconsiderable weight to the entreaty, adding plaintively, that discussions between the embryonic Trinity House Brethren and the government in Westminster for the establishment a light on the dangerous Ness, had been going on for far too long. Sir John Meldrum, an early lighthouse baron, quickly recognized the value of the opportunity to build a beacon at the site of the 1627 wrecks. It could greatly increase his already lucrative income derived from a portfolio of strategically placed lights. These were set up on the North and South Foreland, together with a light on the Isle of Wight, and another at Winterton in Norfolk. He petitioned King Charles I for a grant to build a beacon at Orford Ness, and proposed two lights, a low fore light to be lit by candles that would form an identifying leading mark with the high, or Great Light, erected on the spit some little way behind. However, Meldrum was held in such low esteem by shipping owners who claimed they were being gouged by the baronet with his exorbitant demands for light dues whenever they passed any of his other dominant beacons at the approaches to the London River. These lights enclosed all shipping entering the huge funnel stretching from the north, the English Channel, and from the Lowlands of the Continent. Despite the intense animosity, Meldrum stood his ground and in 1637, some eight years after the first application to the King, he received the valuable grant from the monarch. Meldrum held on to it just long enough to make a quick profit from its sale to an alderman of the City of London by the name of Gerard Gore. In his turn, Gore entered into a twenty-year agreement with the Bailiffs and Burgesses of Aldeburgh, promising to pay a yearly rent of £120 year beginning in November 1650—four times the amount Meldrum had promised the corporation. It is interesting to speculate why Meldrum went on divest himself of the important South Foreland lease to Robert Osbolston just five years later. In spite of the extra cost for fuels, Gore followed Meldrum's proposal with the Low Light on the shingle beach and the Great Light some way behind. The Great Light was a crude timber platform on which an iron brazier was erected. The light source came from coal delivered directly to the beach in calm weather by flat bottom colliers. The coal was unloaded between tides and stacked up by the Great Light. Tallow candles were used on the Low Light and it was said they provided enough illumination to allow shipping to identify the source of the glim on the shore as Orford Ness and navigate safely between the twin hazards of the Aldeburgh Napes and Sizewell Bank. Until the introduction, many years later, of the precisely flashing signature for lighthouses the identity was implied from the number of fixed lights that could be observed. After two decades, Gore grew tired of running his lease and his son-in-law, Sir Edward Turnour, did a deal that included the renewal of the lease of the single Winterton Light, obtained from Sir John Meldrum, and the Orford Ness lights when its lease ran out. Turnour had big things in mind when he bought up virtually derelict land surrounding the lighthouses, thus securing perpetual access to the lighthouses without payment of future easement rents. Unfortunately for Turnour he died in 1676 before taking over the lease from his father-in-law. There follows the often familiar pattern of dereliction of light-keeping duties by Turnour's son Edward (also a baronet), and pretty soon there were choruses of complaints to the Elder Brethren of Trinity House. Many masters passing Orford Ness refused to pay light dues, and storms carried away the Low Light. The brazier was always considered hazardous to start and maintain, and it too burned through its wooden staging. The younger Tournour's enthusiasm for the maintenance of the Orford Ness light was considerably less than his endeavors to become a Member of King Charles the Second's radical parliament. As a final indignity, the borough of Aldeburgh did not return Turnour at the election. Sir Edward then turned his unwelcome attention upon the nearby corporation of Orford as a possible vector to a safe seat in parliament. He made considerable gifts to the town hoping to overcome the antipathy of many of the corporation that had set its face against Turnour's largesse. This division helped to put the mayor out of office, but some of burgesses and portmen would have none of the divisiveness, and for almost ten years there were two corporate bodies attempting to administer the town of Orford in parallel. There were fist-fights and law suits; even a forced entry into the town hall to remove regalia and records. A subsequent election petition was mounted and the returns were found to have been altered. Demands for light dues were ignored and the revenue stream from the Orford Ness light tapered off. All these shenanigans reached the ear of Trinity House (how could they have been ignored?) and although the Elder Brethren had very little authority over the installation they dispatched an inspector to make a report on the situation. He later told the Brethren not only were the lights in very poor condition, they were also constantly under attack by privateers. Sir Edward Turnour, he said with some emphasis, appeared to be more interested in becoming a Member of Parliament than being a diligent lessor of a vital lighthouse lease. There was little improvement in conditions at Orford Ness, despite the critical report to the Brethren. There was further erosion to the beach and the loss of the low light and even the Great Light was under threat. Sir Edward Turnour's lease was set to expire in 1720, and back in 1696, a man named Grey had quietly obtained a lease for the Orford Ness light from the Crown office of William III. It was set to begin on April 13, 1720. When the time came for Grey to take possession of his lease he was met by the mayor of Orford who, as self-styled superintendent of the lights, refused to hand over the keys, saying he had no authority from Turnour to do so. Grey and his men rowed over to the light and forced an entry, then changed the locks. Afterwards the party did a full survey of the premises to ascertain what was needed to restore the lights to their full operating level. Turnour, not to be outdone, alleged trespass and issued a law suite against Grey. It never came to court because the odious baronet died in 1721. After 83 years of willful neglect and distress from the elements Grey found the only practical solution was to rebuild the lights. The old lights were demolished once the two new brick structures were built and lit with an improved coal-fired brazier behind a glazed lantern. The Great Light rose 22m (72 feet) and there was a marked improvement in the combined operation of the new lights. Orford Ness is composed of well-rounded shingle and some sand. It is easily and constantly influenced by the hydraulic energy of the waves, especially during storms. Combating this influence over a short period of 12 years to 1732 required the building of five structures to replace those lost to erosion. The next tower was raised in 1731 and stood for 60 years. It was one of only four lighthouses in England to be lit by flames from circular wicks burning sperm oil in multiple glass funnel lantern displays. The lamps were backed with silvered reflectors and gave a light far superior to any beacon that had gone before. So successful was the Orford Ness light that Grey outfitted his Winterton light similarly. Grey died in September 1740, and his widow ran the lights without attracting official complaints until 1762, when she herself expired, just at the same time that King George III was consolidating his throne. Grey's nephew, Field-Marshal Sir John Griffin-Whitwell succeeded to the lease-holding, and he set about proceedings that would ensure that when the lease fell in it would be extended in his favor for a further 61 years. Sir John was summoned to Parliament in 1784 and four years later he took the title of Baron Braybrooke. He felt that his military career and now his ascension to the peerage would ensure the granting of the renewed leases for Orford Ness and Winterton. However, with this self-satisfaction came a couple of set-backs. Erosion again threatened his asset and, almost 162 years to the day since the original storm created the need for the original Orford Ness light, another storm almost carried away the low light and greatly weakened the Great Light. The dutiful Lord, aware that his reputation as a soldier, and now as a diligent keeper of modern lights, could be easily harmed unless he set to work. Further, his petition to extend the lease would be jeopardized unless he showed action. He engaged William Wilkens, a gifted young architect, the son of a Norwich plasterer and stucco artisan. Work began almost immediately on the building of a new tower at Orford Ness; a tower, it was claimed, that would stand forever. It rose 29.3m (83 feet) high and required 63 steps to reach the lantern house. Inside this domed copper bonnet and vent were 14 oil lamps, each with a silvered reflector. The Roman numerals incised in the stone lintel over the door to the tower proclaimed the structure was built in 1792, but it did not go into regular operation until the following May. With the lighting of the new beacon, the old Great Light tower was modified to become the low light. The new Great Light still stands in full operation on Orford Ness over 200 years later. However, the low light has all but vanished except at extremely low tides, having succumbed to the restless scour Five years after his triumph at Orford Ness, Lord Braybrooke died. That same year a Select Committee on Foreign Trade appointed by Parliament made the very unpopular proposal that there should be no further private lighthouse leases, and all existing leases be made over to Trinity House. As parliamentarians were debating the proposal the second Lord Braybrooke petitioned for the renewal of the lease he had inherited from his father. Unfortunately a cruel turn of fate robbed the second baron of further enjoyment of his lighthouses for he died on the last day of February 1825. The third Lord Braybrooke petitioned for, and had the grant for the Orford Ness and Winterton lights renewed for a period of 25 years, but in response to the critical views on private ownership another committee under Joseph Hulme, M.P., uncovered some astounding figures. The average profits from the revenues of the last three years of the old grant was £13,414 per year, a figure deemed to be excessive by the critics. The light dues of one penny per ton were cut to one-half penny per ton. Additionally, half the profits were to be made over to the Crown. There were still grumbles from the shipping owners and Trinity House eventually carried the day. On the first day of January, 1837 the third Lord Braybooke of Saffron Walden, Essex, received £37,896 seven shillings and one penny by way of compensation for the loss of revenues from the un-expired part of the lease, and Trinity House took over all private leases in England. Over the 150 years or so of Trinity House stewardship Orford Ness lighthouse lost its grand title of The Great Light, and saw many evolutionary changes in lighthouse technology and management. For instance, one of the first moves Trinity House made on taking control was to recruit and train permanent, uniformed keepers and their assistants. Monies were applied to routine maintenance, and protection of the structures as well as the building of new premises to house the latest equipment being installed. Two sets of quarters were built, attached like panniers on either side of the base of the tower. Each cottage had identical accommodation built on a handed plan with a living room, kitchen and scullery at ground level, and a back door giving way to a yard, outhouse and garden. There were two bedrooms above and these were accessed by separate stairs rising from the common hallway attained behind the main front door and at the base of the light tower. Outside was a shared building consisting of a wash-house, a coal-fired copper boiler, a carriage house, a stable, and two pig sties. The cottages were heated up stairs and down by open coal fires, together with an iron range and boiler on each side of the open fireplace. Trinity House had strict rules for the occupation of the cottages by the Keeper and Assistant Keeper together with their families. Not only did they have to attend to their onerous lightkeeping duties, but also the regular painting with hot limewash of the inside and out of the walls of the entire premises; even the coal sheds were required to be whitened. Records suggest the average period of occupation by each family was about three years before promotion or dismissal moved them on to another location. The Elders applied considerable thought and money to improving the lights in its charge. For instance, Trinity House believed an invention of the young French physicist, Augustin Jean Fresnel (pronounced Frey-nell), had considerable merit. Fresnel showed that by placing circular and concentric prisms before the light source set at the prime focus light rays could be concentrated into a very bright beam. While expensive to buy and install, a Fresnel lens required only regular cleaning and polishing to show a tangible cost saving in lamp oil over the period of just a few years. The Elder Brethren procured a small Fresnel unit and had it installed in the old light tower, now called the Small Light. Its performance was found to be less than that expected of it, and in 1862 a consultant recommended by the Royal Society was engaged to adjust the lens and frame to make improvements. Because international patent law was almost unheard of in the early years of the 19th century, Fresnel's ideas were fair game for copying. François-Pierre Ami Argand's designs for multi-wick oil lamps were equally plagurized in England and especially by Wilmslow Lewis in the United States of America, The fact that the Argand lamp and the Fresnel lens were of French origin only added to official determination to re-invent the ideas as English. Fresnel had died in 1827, and any thought of plagiarism was quickly forgotten. Two brothers named Chance owned and operated a renowned glass works for the manufacture of fine crystal and the Elder Brethren prevailed on the brothers to invest in the lighthouse business. With this encouragement and patronage, a new factory was built near Birmingham, England. In a short time the Chance Lighthouse Works was manufacturing not only lenses and their frames, but also precision clockwork escapements and turntables to rotate the heavy lenses and their light sources. Thus the precisely flashing lighthouse was born, and it had a profound effect on the display and management of current and future lights. In 1867 Orford Ness lighthouse had major alterations and upgrading. The dome-topped lantern house was replaced with a lantern of larger diameter and height. The outside of the tower was given wrought iron bands to strengthen the structure and these bands formed logical boundaries for the new and distinctive day mark of wide bands painted in red. About the same time the lights were given colored sector shades: green and red for the high light and a red shade for the low light. But after another great storm in 1887 carried away the weakened structure of the low light the Elder Brethren decided to not rebuild it, instead, commissioned a new lighthouse to be built at Southwold, about 26km (16 miles) up the Suffolk coast. The following year bricklayers fashioned bigger window opening and frames in the tower. The windows were glazed with red and green colored glass and an array of Argand lamps were installed. By 1899 the fuel for the lamps at Orford Ness was changed to Colza oil, and new wicks and wick galleries were installed to handle the improved fuel. With the opening of the new century the pace of technology was gathering speed. Chance Bros. supplied Trinity House with three large catadioptric lenses set at 120 degrees and mounted on a circular platform with a focal plane of 28.3m (93 feet) above mean high water. The platform had a concentric flange immersed in a circular trough filled with mercury on which the platform and its lenses floated. This almost frictionless bearing ensured the light table floated exactly level with respect to the horizon and allowed the entire machine and light to be driven by a clockwork mechanism energized by the inertia of a heavy weight descending in a tube at the center of the tower. Keepers rewound the weight by hand from time to time to prevent the rotating light stalling. It was at this moment that the characteristics of Orford Ness light were first displayed: One flash of a quarter of a second every five seconds. The same signature is still in use today. Chance Bros. also supplied two fixed catadioptric lenses for the sector lights, 14.3m (47 feet) below the main light. The source for the new light was a brilliant incandescent mantle burning in a fixed focal point in the middle of the lens platform. It was derived from a Swedish invention developed by D. W. Hood, Engineer-in-Chief of Trinity House to greatly increase the efficiency of the lights over the early Argand oil lamps installed from the time of Lord Braybrooke. The Swedish invention introduced the fuel of petroleum oil (kerosene) under pressure and directed it through a pre-heater coil. The vapor given off was vented through a very small orifice where it issued through an oxidizer before being ignited. After an initial preheating, the burner became self-sustaining. In the Hood Petroleum Vapour Burners the gas was directed to the inside of a mantle and performed far better than lime light, which was also examined by Trinity House as a possible improvement over multi-wick oil lamps. No sooner had the new light swung around over its huge arc above the East Suffolk coastal waters when it was deliberately doused for four long years by the outbreak of World War I. Orford Ness light was, however, lit occasionally under the direction of the Admiralty to help the passage of friendly ships and convoys. Not that the Germans were fooled by the darkness. On June 17, 1917, the Zeppelin L.48 prowled in the area looking for targets. This drew response from fighters of the Royal Flying Corps who rose from the dark marshes quickly engaged the huge hydrogen-filled target, shooting it down in flames at nearby Theberton. There are village elders that still remember the event well. Neglect during those war years was gradually recovered and Orford Ness lighthouse became the pleasant objective for summer picnics and hikes. Then this seemingly harmless activity was forbidden and came to an end on February 28, 1939, upon the orders of the Elder Brethren. No reasons were given, but locals understood there was a conspiracy of secrecy to which they had been implicitly bound for several years. A short distance to the south at Bawdsey on the north side of the River Deben, the Crown requisitioned the Manor House and home of former M.P. Sir Cuthbert Quilter. Royal Air Force Police occupied the Lodge supported by fierce dogs and movement in the area was very restricted. Aerial towers were erected at Bawdsey and on Orford Ness. In the Manor House Robert (later Sir Robert) Watson-Watt was overseeing experiments with the radio location of aircraft (radar). In September, Britain was once again at war with Germany and the mysterious towers at Bawdsey, Orford Ness and elsewhere gave advanced warning of Hitler's Luftwaffe blitzkrieg against London and other British cities. Once again, the Orford Ness light was doused, and all movement of people and vehicles within 32km (20 miles) of the East Anglian coast was greatly restricted. The Orford Ness lighthouse was the target of a bombing mission by the Italian Air Force; irregular shoot-ups by Luftwaffe fighter-bombers; inadvertent damage from friendly fire used to attack German aircraft ; and later in the war, shooting at V1 Flying Bombs, as well as the neglect of five years of war. The Ministry of Defence never relinquished its occupation of the Ness, maintaining the security restrictions and secrecy while the area was converted to the needs of atomic weapons research. However, the upside for Trinity House was that the A.W.R.E. demanded secure supplies of electricity, and was willing to share them with the Elder Brethren. The two cottages were demolished, the doorways sealed and the area cleaned up. An outhouse was converted to house the standby generator. Then on September 23, 1959, the lights of Orford Ness used electricity for their source of power. The turntable of the lenses was driven by an electric motor instead of the falling weight, and there was a standby-electric motor in case the primary motor failed. By January 1964, remote control, with monitoring by Trinity House depot at Harwich, 25km (15 miles) to the south, took total charge of the light, one of the first fully automated lighthouses in Britain. Much of Orford Ness was purchased by the National Trust from the Ministry of Defence in 1993, and the venerable Orford Ness lighthouse now stands alone on a barren spit of shingle surrounded and protected by a sympathetic landowner.
Derrick Booth
References:
Orford Light and other history of Orford and more by Adrian Underwood as written by his Dad Charlie Underwood MBE...Great Site (IE)
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