Qualla: Old Hunstanton Lighthouse

Old Hunstanton Lighthouse: Introduction

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gavin Stewart, CC BY 2.0. Before there was a lighthouse at Hunstanton Point, there was a chapel. Sailors entering The Wash at night used the lights burning in St Edmund's Chapel — a modest medieval structure on the headland — to find their way through the shallow, sandbank-riddled waters of the bay. As late as 1838, a hydrographer's guide still called the position 'the Chapel Light, on Hunstanton Point.' The transition from chapel candle to engineered lighthouse took two centuries and several false starts.

Image: Gavin Stewart | CC BY 2.0

Old Hunstanton Lighthouse: Charles II and the First Lights

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alienturnedhuman at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1663 a consortium of merchants and ship-owners from Boston and King's Lynn petitioned for permission to erect lights near St Edmund's Point. The Wash was — and remains — treacherous: wide, shallow, laced with shifting sandbanks, navigable only by those who knew its channels. C...

Image: Alienturnedhuman at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Old Hunstanton Lighthouse: The Innovation of 1776

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Humphrey, CC BY-SA 2.0. Around 1776, the rear lighthouse was destroyed by fire. Edward Everard of Lynn — grandson of Rebecca and James, heir to the patent rights — commissioned a replacement: a circular wooden tower 33 feet high. What made the new light remarkable was its illuminant. Rather than coal, w...

Image: Richard Humphrey | CC BY-SA 2.0

Old Hunstanton Lighthouse: Decommissioning and Afterlife

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lighthouse ceased operations in 1921. The lantern storey was removed from the top of the tower the following year. To compensate for its closure, improvements were made to the light of the Inner Dowsing lightvessel, which took on some of the navigational duties the old tower ...

Image: DeFacto | CC BY-SA 4.0