Eddystone Lighthouse

Eddystone Lighthouse stands on the Eddystone Rocks, a small and dangerous reef in open water about 9 miles from Rame Head and 13 miles south-west of Plymouth. The current tower, completed in 1882, is the fourth to be built on the site. It is a 49 m granite tower designed by Sir James Douglass, with the light 41 m above high water, and it was the first Trinity House rock lighthouse to be automated, in 1982. It is now monitored from Trinity House’s Planning Centre in Harwich, Essex.

The first three towers each have a story. Henry Winstanley’s wooden tower of 1698 was the first lighthouse built on a rock in the open sea. John Rudyerd’s timber tower, lit in 1709, burned down in 1755. John Smeaton’s granite tower, lit by 24 candles on 16 October 1759, was shaped on an oak tree and used dovetailed stone blocks and a quick-drying cement still used today. Cracks in the rock beneath it meant a new tower was needed in the 1870s.

The lighthouse is not open to visitors, but you can see part of the Smeaton story on land. The top half of Smeaton’s tower was taken down and re-erected on Plymouth Hoe as a monument to its builder, and the stump of the tower still stands on the rocks next to Douglass’s lighthouse. Check The Box Plymouth for visiting details for the Hoe tower. The nearest Cornish coast is the Rame Peninsula.