To the Lighthouse (with the Lighthouse Keeper)

In June 2013, Sarah and I went to stay for a few days in one of our favourite places on earth, Anglesey. In this first post about our visit we manage to get into a place we have long admired, the South Stack Lighthouse. The post, as you will see, features a man called Gordon Medlicott, amongst the last of the Lighthouse Keepers here before all of the UK’s lighthouses were automated up to 1998.

In fact all lighthouses have fascinated us both for years. On our travels up and down the west coast of Britain we have always made detours to go and look at them. And I remember once when we were in Cornwall going specially to Penzance to visit the National Lighthouse Museum, only to find it had recently been closed down.

Imagine my delight then, when one Sunday in March 2014, I received an email from Gordon Medlicott, the Lighthouse Keeper featured here, saying how much he’d enjoyed the post. With Gordon’s agreement some of his words are now included at the end of the piece. After all, it’s not every day you hear from a Lighthouse Keeper!

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Here in Liverpool on a grey, partly rainy Tuesday our blue, sunny weekend on Anglesey seems a world away already. But full of photographs, memories and opinions, we have lots to say about what we found, and will both be doing so in a few linked posts this week.

Idyllically situated by beautiful Porth Dafarch beach, Sarah was soon painting. More art to come in Sarah’s soon coming ‘Wildflowers of Anglesey’ post.

We spent most of our time on Ynys Gybi, the smaller island off the tip of Anglesey, and the majority of our time there exploring the heathlands and cliffs leading up to South Stack. And there’ll be much about that on Sarah’s Wildflower post. For now we’re going to visit one particular feature of South Stack, its lighthouse.

We’ve looked at the Lighthouse several times before, coming to South Stack to see its huge colonies of nesting birds, particularly guillemots and puffins. But the Lighthouse has never been open for us to go in. This time it is and Sarah persuades me to go and have a look. Persuades me? Yes, it’s so visually perfect I was reluctant to have it spoiled by any kind of ‘Visitor Centre’ blanding out experience. I needn’t have worried as it turned out.

First of all it’s down the 400 or so steps carved out of the rock face to get to the bridge across to Ynys Lawd, the tiny island where the Lighthouse is.

There’s a good history of the Lighthouse at this link, so I won’t re-tell it all here. But as we walk on to the island we’re walking into a miracle of engineering from over 200 years ago. Built by hand in seven months.

And I’m no geologist but I can tell there’s something very special going on here in these folds of 500 to 700 million year old rocks. But now – To the Lighthouse. I love lighthouses. I’ve gazed at them and read about them for years. But their doors are mostly closed now, their lights operated remotely, rather than by small teams of doughty lighthouse-keepers. So I’m about to enter the first lighthouse of my life. And there is a bit of a visitor display, but it’s quietly done.

And yes, the light, that’s where we want to go.

The wonders of its mechanism are explained to us. The light held steady, in a lighthouse designed to move in the wind, on a bed of mercury.

And a bit more history.

Their families too, when families lived here and babies were born on the island. But from 1935 that was stopped and the keepers worked one month on the island and one month off, with their families.

Talking of which, any small fluffy baby gulls to show you? We were the last to leave, other than the 3 staff looking after all the visitors. And we left reluctantly. This is a wonderful place.

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So we arrive at March 2013 and Gordon Medlicott, the featured South Stack Lighthouse Keeper writes to us.

“Only just come across your site.Many thanks for the pictures of South Stack lighthouse, very nostalgic. Brought back many memories of my time there, especially with the link to the Post article covering the rescue. I am hoping to revisit there later this year.
Best wishes
Gordon Medlicott”

Favourite books about lighthouses? (Though I now have a much more comprehensive list from ALK)

‘The Lighthouse Stevensons’ by Bella Bathurst. ‘Between 1790 and 1940, eight members of Robert Louis Stevenson’s family planned, designed and constructed the 97 manned lighthouses which still speckle the Scottish coast, working in conditions and places which would be daunting even for modern engineers.’

‘Stargazing’ by Peter Hill. A wonderful book, telling the story of a young man who becomes one of the final generation of lighthouse keepers. ‘An enlightening book for anyone who ever dreamed that living in a lighthouse might offer them a quiet place in which to read, write, paint, meditate or do anything which requires peace and isolation.’

‘Lighthousekeeping’ by Jeanette Winterson. Her novel about growing up in a lighthouse constructed in 1828, just after South Stack. ‘There were two Atlantics; one outside the lighthouse, and one inside me. The one inside me had no string of guiding lights.’

And of course ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf.

See our other Anglesey posts from this visit:
Heaven in a wildflower and Half-life?