Hurst Point, Wednesday 21 August

by Ken Trethewey

On Wednesday afternoon I planned to take the tourist boat from Lymington to view the Needles at close range. I had never done this before and had been required in the past to content myself with a distant view of this unique lighthouse. Not knowing the departure times of the boats, I set off from Gosport at 1200 and arrived in Lymington at about 1315. Sadly (for me), at this time of year, there was a good deal of tourist traffic and the place where I was forced to park was a good distance from the harbour. By the time I had made my way to the place where the boat departed, it was 1330 and I discovered to my annoyance that the boat had departed at 1315.

Fortunately, I had a second plan. I would go to Hurst Point lighthouse. The lighthouse can be accessed by walking along the spit from Milford -on-Sea. It can also be reached by small passenger ferry that sails from Keyhaven every 30 minutes during the summer months. The lighthouse is automatic and cannot be visited internally, but is readily visited externally. By road, leave the M27 at junction 1 and follow signs for Lyndhurst, Lymington and Milford-on-Sea. Hurst Fort is well signposted.

It was in 1974 that I last visited this light, although I had taken my mother to a viewing point in 1996. However, an inspection was long overdue. I knew very well that the lighthouse, together with a very splendid castle, was situated on the end of a long pebble ridge that extended for about 3 km out into the Solent and I fully expected to make the long walk but I had plenty of time and I had brought some good walking shoes. I remembered that the best place to go was New Milford-on-Sea but was not sure of the best approach by road, and I found myself in the small town of Keyhaven. There was a rather nice car park with toilets and a pleasant yacht club nearby and, though it was a little further to walk, it seemed like a good place to start. I parked the car and noticed that there was an obvious tourist boat alongside the quay in the distance. It looked as though it was about to leave, but by the time I had got my equipment together I missed it. When I eventually reached the place where I had seen it, I discovered that the boat I had seen was going to the Needles, leaving every day at 1400. It was now 1405! I was very annoyed. The good news, however, was that tourist boats were leaving from here too for the lighthouse and castle on Hurst Point every thirty minutes, so I decided to wait for the next one.

The trip to Hurst Point by boat is greatly recommended. The narrow channel weaves its way between the lines of moored yachts and arrives circuitously at the beach on the eastern side of the spit of land. Here, landing is not so easy now that the previously installed moveable jetty has been irrevocably attacked by rot. So a new system is installed whereby the boat picks up a moveable pontoon and drags it to a point close enough to the beach for the passengers to disembark.

On this particular day, the weather was beautiful. There was a certain amount of cloud cover, but sufficiently broken to allow periods of warm sunshine that bathed the subjects of my photographs in bright light and provided exciting backgrounds of dramatic skies. As you might expect, I immediately made for the lighthouse, which was situated quite close to where the boat landed us. The last time I was this close to the lighthouse was in 1974 and I had no real recollection as to the extent of the station. My photographs from the time did not provide me with in-depth coverage of the site, so my visit on this occasion was most exciting as I rediscovered the station.

As a whole, the buildings were all in excellent condition, looking freshly painted and maintained. Besides the tower and its working buildings, there were two accommodation buildings, one looking disused but in fair condition and the other both disused and in a dilapidated state.

The layout is in a kind of rectangular geometry. The tower has a small porch and alongside is a detached building with three green doors. On the other side of the rectangular paved courtyard is an unusual large high-roofed building. All buildings were padlocked and it was not possible to determine their present uses, except to presume them to be stores, especially as there were hazard warning notices stuck on the outside of each door. However, the large high-roofed building is especially unusual in design, having high level circular windows. I can think of no equivalent to this in any other Trinity House station. I thought that it might have been originally used for the various engines.

The nearer accommodation building were striking because of the way in which its approach path had been planted with bushes - broom, I think - and the way in which these bushes had now grown so large as to almost suffocate the house they were originally decorating. In one case, an entrance through a gate to the front door was completely obscured. It was particularly noticeable in this location because there is so little other vegetation in the surrounding area.

As a visitor, you cannot fail to notice two other structures that look like lighthouse lanterns sitting high up on the ramparts of the castle. In order to get a closer look, you have to enter the castle - which is a most pleasurable experience - but it does imply that the castle should be open and you are required to pay a couple of pounds to do so.

It is not possible here to discuss in depth the history of this astonishing structure, except to say that it was originated in the time of Henry VIII but that most of the structure was built in the era of Lord Palmerston and the date above the entrance is 1876. The general layout is a long, curved array of what are known as casemates - large chambers with apertures at the front of them made of great slabs of vertically mounted cast iron through which the old guns protruded to face the potential enemy. The size and extent of these is quite amazing and the gross tonnage of heavy duty structural work that was done here is beyond the imagination of anyone who has not visited it.

At the rear of the castle is an inaccessible rampart upon which - possible as part of the original building, was constructed a circular stone lighthouse tower. At the time, this was the front light of a pair of leading lights, the rear light being the currently used tower, and the pair would have been used to guide ships into the western approaches of the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. The use of two stone towers must have eventually led to a problem of misalignment. This is possibly because, at some time afterwards, a second light was constructed very close to the first, but made of steel in the style of a lantern from a lightvessel, and built upon a metal framework tower that was presumably moveable. In the past (and certainly when I visited in 1974) it was painted red, but it was now a very bleak grey and, although it was possible to see the optic, both towers were disused.

An interesting point is that I have recently received a photograph from a friend showing a red-painted lantern vent sitting on the ground inside the castle. I did not see this during my visit. My feeling is that it is the cowling from the old roof of the Needles lighthouse, which would have been removed in order to construct the helicopter-landing platform. This hypothesis has yet to be confirmed.

One aspect of my research that I have rather neglected in the past and which I have tried to improve upon this year is to obtain a more complete picture of the other navigational lights, that is, things that might not necessarily be considered to be lighthouses. It is true that this is strictly outside the scope of my research, but because of the difficulties of describing the term 'lighthouse' - a problem that frequently arises - I have become to feel obliged to consider these structures, especially if I happen to be in the area anyway. It is convenient to refer to these as simply ALL-listed structures, because my main reference source for all of my work is now the Admiralty List of Lights (ALL).

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.