Long before telephones and texts, beacons played a key role in the networks of local, regional and national communications. Before that, Celtic bonfires sent messages to the gods requesting fruitful crops and the sun’s return after winter. Being nearer to the heavens and, therefore, closer to the deities in whom the worshippers believed, hilltops were frequently the favoured places for positioning any such beacons of hope. High ground was considered to be one of the most sacred parts of the earth—a consideration that continued into Christianity. In the book of Isaiah, ‘a beacon upon the top of a mountain’ is mentioned and Jeremiah tells of ‘a sign of fire’ warning of forthcoming evil.
For navigation more practical than spiritual, beacons situated along the coastline guided sailors and their ships into safe harbour. On Castle Hill at Dover, the Romans built the eight-sided Pharos, which still stands today. Constructed of stone, platforms at the top of its towers held metal braziers, the light from which sent signals to a second similar structure at the Western Heights opposite, as well as corresponding with one some 21 miles away at Cap Gris Nez on the northern French coast.
Beacons of one kind or another aided coastal smugglers in both navigation and communication during the 1700s. In order to indicate a landing spot safe from the attention of the customs and excise men, those waiting on shore often positioned a lantern in the mouth of a convenient cave. Thus placed, it could only be seen from the sea. An alternative was to light a beacon of locally growing furze, which burned briskly, but brightly at night; in the case of planned daylight landings, green, damp vegetation was used to smother the flames and produce plumes of smoke.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 09, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
