The Den and Powderham Terrace, Teignmouth

by Ken Trethewey

[The Den (with Powderham Terrace behind), Ken Trethewey, 2002]

It had been annoying me all summer, somewhat, that for all of the lighthouses that I had visited in my lifetime, there were two that were on my own doorstep that I had never visited - The Den, at Teignmouth, and Berry Head. I could be forgiven (perhaps) for missing the Den. Although I have been to Teignmouth many times, the Den lighthouse is a small, rather insignificant little lighthouse that stands close to the beach and to the entrance to the harbour. It is short - only 6 metres tall, but is a round, grey stone tower in the traditional style, and has a traditional lantern and small optic.

Now it is true to say, that the great majority of years that I have spent studying lighthouses has always been focussed on the grander members of the class, and that the minor lights had never particularly attracted a high priority on my list of places to visit. I don't remember when that priority changed, but it surely has this year. The Den lighthouse, though quite insignificant in the pecking order, has featured quite highly on picture postcards of Teignmouth for most of the twentieth century, so it has probably received greater attention than many of its siblings. It is quite old too, built in 1845, and was in a surprisingly good state of repair when I arrived there late in the afternoon.

The weather for visiting was not good, being overcast and dull. Rain was in the air, but it had not yet started when I arrived. It was quite chilly as the autumnal breezes swept away the last vestiges of the Indian summer we had just experienced. Nevertheless, there were still some tourists ambling about on the promenade. I'm not quite sure what they thought of me when they saw this professional-looking chap with lots of cameras and documentation under his arm, taking lots of photographs of this very unmemorable little structure that seemed to have been deposited in the car park like an abandoned, stolen car.

[Powderham Terrace, Ken Trethewey, 2002]

The lighthouse is situated at the southern end of the promenade, past the pier, at a point close to where the River Teign passes through the port and joins the sea. Indeed, the lighthouse is clearly designed to facilitate the traffic of vessels using the port. To my surprise, when I consulted the 'documentation' that I had brought with me, namely, the Admiralty List of Lights, I discovered that the lighthouse is actually the front of a pair of leading lights. The question was, where was the other light? The book identified it as Powderham Terrace, a black column '6 metres' in height. There was nothing obvious nearby. Inspection of the latitude and longitude, showed that it must be very close because they were identical. Then I spotted the black post. It was just in front of a row of sea-facing houses and was easily mistaken for a street light, except that the red navigational light on the top was recognisable to someone like me. The post, however, was a good 10 metres tall.

So the visit to Teignmouth had been very worthwhile and not just one new light, but two had been added to the list of espied structures for 2002.

Copyright 2002 Ken Trethewey; all rights reserved.

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Posted August 12, 2005. Site copyright 2005 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.