Souter Lighthouse Rewired
By Sue Clark on Mar 15, 2008 in Featured 
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Good Friday Reopening Set
The popular tourist attraction, the Souter Lighthouse in South Tyneside, UK, has been completely rewired as part of an effort by the National Trust, owner of the lighthouse. It has taken a team of eight people since January to complete this project, which they described as “challenging.” The cost of the project, paid for from the Trust’s Building Fund, was more than £100,000 and involved the laying of over 5,000 meters, or 16,404 feet, of new cable and 130 new fittings. It is hoped the rewiring will make the rambling house and 75 foot tall tower more energy efficient.
From the story at the Journal Online:
Nick Dolan, property manager at Souter Lighthouse, said: “It was a challenging project. Souter is like a big house with a lot of eccentric spaces and a lot of decisions had to be made about the best way of proceeding. We had to make sure that the historic building was treated with integrity. The electricians have done a great job, and though it has been hard work for them and the staff at Souter it has been a worthwhile project, and a very necessary one.”
“The electricians uncovered some of the old cables from the 1950s, and over the years additional wires had been added as the use of the building evolved. Now we can be reassured that the work now will stand us in good stead for the future, and make us more energy-efficient.”
From Electricity To Oil And Back Again
Souter Lighthouse is unique in that it is the first lighthouse built to use AC electricity, in 1871. The original lamp used a steam generator for power, and the light, providing 800,000 candlepower, was generated using carbon arc bulbs rather than filament based ones. From Wikipedia: In a carbon arc lamp, the electrodes are carbon rods in free air. To ignite the lamp, the rods are touched together, thus allowing a relatively low voltage to strike the arc. The rods are then slowly drawn apart, and electric current heats and maintains an arc across the gap. The tips of the carbon rods are heated to incandescence, creating light.
However, in 1919 it was altered to use the standard oil based lantern system, and stayed that way until it was converted back to electricity again in the 1950s. Souter is also known for having the (alleged) loudest foghorn in the UK. It produced a sound that could be heard for miles inland, along with all the way from Sunderland to Whitley Bay. Lightkeepers posted at the station were paid “noisy pay” for having to put up with the extreme noise when working their shifts while the foghorn was in action.
The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1988, and probably many residents were happy to no longer have to hear the 5 second blast of the foghorn every 30 seconds. They, obviously, got no extra pay for having to listen to it. And it’s a sure thing for many months afterward, people from the area still talked like a lightkeeper. That is, talk in bursts for 30 seconds, stop for 5 seconds, talk again for 30 seconds, and so on. It does remain in working order, and is blasted once a month during the summer.
Souter Island is said to be haunted, and appered on the British television show, Most Haunted, in July of 2002. Lighthouse News wonders if its spirit may be that of a lightkeeper who killed himself after having to listen to the foghorn. (Just kidding).
Photo Credits:
- Souter Lighthouse by Eleda. Some rights reserved.
- Souter Island Foghorn by HoM. GNU Free Documentation License.
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