KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON

The lighthouse at The Needles may be one of the enduring symbols of the Isle of Wight, but does it still have a role in the 21st century?

- Sebastian Oake

“I know exactly what you’re going to do and say all the time!” So shouted the two feuding lighthouse keepers at each other across the kitchen table, exhausted with each other’s company after 12 years together in the same lighthouse. One hated the other for always whistling EastEnders while making the tea, while he was hated in return for repeatedly opening a packet of biscuits the wrong way.

It was a piece of classic comedy performed by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones called the Predictable Lighthouse Keepers and was an amusing skit, albeit a slightly unkind one.

It wouldn’t happen now in real life because lighthouse keepers are a thing of the past in Britain. It is over 25 years since the lighthouse at The Needles off the Isle of Wight was automated and the keepers left for the last time. It is now controlled remotely by Trinity House from an operations centre at Harwich and it is the same for Hampshire’s other lighthouses at Hurst Point, St Catherine’s Point and Nab Tower.

Life was never easy for the keepers when they lived at places such as Needles Lighthouse. Gerry DouglasSherwood, former president of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, had a 28-year career on lighthouses. He had short spells at St Catherine’s and Nab Tower – describing his time at the latter “a grim and very curious experience” – but it is his 12-and-a-half years at Needles that he remembers most.