Smalls Lighthouse

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Smalls Lighthouse stands on a small rock approximately 20 miles (≈32 km) west of St. David's Peninsula in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It was erected in 1861 by engineer James Douglass to replace a previous lighthouse which had been erected in 1776 on the same rock.

It relies on a 35-watt bulb powered by solar power but its beams can be seen from 21 miles (≈34 km) away owing to powerful lenses.

The Smalls Lighthouse from several miles away.

[edit] The Previous House

The original Smalls Lighthouse was erected over 1775 and 1776, on the plans of Liverpool musical instrument maker Henry Whiteside. The bold design stood on nine oak pillars, in order to allow the raging seas to pass through. It suffered from some rocking, but stood for 80 years, and the pillar-based design has since been used successfully in many sea structures.

The old lighthouse was the home of an unusual level of intrigue. The first message in a bottle was successfully sent from the small island, reaching its addressee through the miles of sea, and allowing a rescue of stranded repair workers , including Whiteside himself.

More disturbingly, the old lighthouse brought about a change in lighthouse policy in 1801 after a gruesome episode. The two man team, Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith, were known to quarrel, and so when Griffith died in a freak accident, Howell feared that he might be suspected of murder if he discarded the body into the sea. As the body began to decompose, Howell built a makeshift coffin for the corpse and lashed it to an outside shelf. Stiff winds blew the box apart, though, and the body was fixed in a macabre, beckoning pose.

By the time the usual service boat arrived, several months later, Howell was apparently white-haired and driven mad. Lighthouse teams wre changed to rosters of three from this point on until the automation of all British lighthouses in the 1980s.

In 1978 a helideck was erected above the lantern and the lighthouse was automated in 1987.

The story of this lighthouse was presented in the Series 1 episode of the BBC television program Coast entitled "Bristol to Fishguard".