Qualla: Beachy Head Lighthouse https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Beachy Head Lighthouse https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse Beachy Head Lighthouse: Introduction https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit LilSkang, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cliff above it is white. The lighthouse below it is striped, red and white, like a stick of seaside rock dropped at the bottom of a 162-metre drop. Trinity House built Beachy Head Lighthouse between 1900 and 1902 because the older Belle Tout lighthouse, perched on the cliff top three hundred metres away, kept disappearing into the sea mists that roll up out of the English Channel. The solution was almost a different kind of question: don't build it where you can be seen from the cliff, build it where you can be seen from the sea. They moved the light 165 metres out, set it on an iron platform at the water's edge, and went on to build, in 3,660 tons of Cornish granite, the last wave-washed masonry lighthouse Trinity House ever made.

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Image: LilSkang | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Beachy Head Lighthouse: The Cable Car Over the Cliff https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Alexis Markwick, CC0. Construction began under Sir Thomas Matthews, Trinity House's Engineer-in-Chief, in 1900. The site was the trickiest a Victorian engineer could reasonably ask for: a wave-battered tide platform at the foot of a chalk cliff with no road access, exposed to the full fetch of the Eng...

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Image: Alexis Markwick | CC0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-the-cable-car-over-the-cliff.mp3 0:06 2 full Beachy Head Lighthouse: Explosives on the Gallery https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0. The original light was a first-order revolving catadioptric optic made of three double panels, throwing two white flashes every twenty seconds across the Channel. The source was a paraffin vapour burner of Matthews's own design - kerosene mantled like a giant pressure lamp. But i...

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Image: Ian Capper | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-explosives-on-the-gallery.mp3 0:06 3 full Beachy Head Lighthouse: Stripes Worth Saving https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Brian Snelson from Hockley, Essex, England, CC BY 2.0. When the colour scheme changed in 1951, the lighthouse got the red and white bands that gave it its postcard identity. For sixty years the stripes were repainted on a regular cycle, an obligation Trinity House discharged as part of the basic upkeep of British coastal aids to navi...

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Image: Brian Snelson from Hockley, Essex, England | CC BY 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-stripes-worth-saving.mp3 0:06 4 full Beachy Head Lighthouse: The Brighter Sister https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Jowaninpensans, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beachy Head's role changed once more in 2018. When Trinity House decided to demolish the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse - a 1970s concrete tower on a shoal seven miles east, no longer viable to maintain - the Beachy Head light was strengthened to compensate for the loss. Its nominal ...

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Image: Jowaninpensans | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-the-brighter-sister.mp3 0:06 5 full Beachy Head Lighthouse: A Cameo and a Falling Car https://qualla.com/beachy-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Martin Addison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Some lighthouses earn their fame on the postcards. Beachy Head earned a piece of its from the cinema. In the 1968 film *Chitty Chitty Bang Bang*, when the magical car finally takes off, the cliff it drives off is Beachy Head and the lighthouse appears in the shot below as Caracta...

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Image: Martin Addison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/0/beachy-head-lighthouse-wp/u100-beachy-head-lighthouse-a-cameo-and-a-falling-car.mp3 0:06 6 full