Qualla: Flamborough Head Lighthouse

Flamborough Head Lighthouse: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Partonez, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two whites to one red indicates Flambro Head. That was the Victorian pilot book mnemonic, the line every navigator memorised as their vessel ran the North Sea coast in fog or darkness. Samuel Wyatt's lighthouse, first lit on the night of 1 December 1806, was the first in England to flash a coloured character. George Robinson, the optics specialist who designed the original apparatus, mounted twenty-one parabolic reflectors on a three-sided rotating frame, seven per side, with the red-filtered panels on each side cut more than twice as wide as the white panels to make up for the light the colour stole. The result was unmistakable. From far out at sea, you watched two white flashes, then one red, and you knew where you were.

Image: Partonez | CC BY-SA 4.0

Flamborough Head Lighthouse: Two Lighthouses on One Headland

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Delaina Haslam, CC BY 2.0. Flamborough Head actually has two lighthouses. The older one is a chalk tower built by Sir John Clayton in 1674, one of the oldest surviving complete lighthouses in England, made from the same chalk as the cliffs it stands on. It was never lit. The light source for which it was i...

Image: Delaina Haslam | CC BY 2.0

Flamborough Head Lighthouse: The Widest Lens Panels in the World

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. George Robinson's challenge with the original 1806 light was the ruby glass. Coloured filters cut intensity, sometimes badly. To compensate, he made the two red-flashing panels of his revolving optic more than double the width of the white panels, with an azimuth width of 69.5 de...

Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Flamborough Head Lighthouse: The 1925 Lens and the End of Keepers

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick Mutton, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1925 engineers raised the lantern to take a new fifteen-foot lens, a first-order revolving catadioptric optic with four asymmetrical panels that displayed four white flashes every fifteen seconds. The old 1806 apparatus was disassembled and shipped to the Bahamas, where it joi...

Image: Nick Mutton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Flamborough Head Lighthouse: The Cannon and the Rockets

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Faulkner from Leeds, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. Some way off from the lighthouse, closer to the cliff edge, a fog signal station went up in 1859. The first signal was an eighteen-pound gun, fired once every fifteen minutes when the weather closed in. The gunners lived in a cottage in the compound. In 1878 the cannon was replac...

Image: Rob Faulkner from Leeds, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0