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REAL VICTORIAN HEROES ne of the first things you notice in the Isles of Scilly are the lighthouses. Six of them, if you count Wolf Rock, guard the islands from every approach. Most were built by three generations of the Douglass family in the 19th Century, who permanently lived on-site. “They never lost a man, which, when you think about what they were doing — moving three-tonne blocks of concrete with nothing but manpower — is just incredible,” says Jess Vian, Scilly lighthouse enthusiast and Isles of Scilly Museum trustee. “They could do it because no-one told them they couldn’t. They were phenomenal engineers and extremely brave men who could turn their hand to anything. They could draft plans and build, they could sail, row, and they would jump into the sea to rescue anyone if they got swept away. They were real Victorian heroes.”
Copyright The Francis Frith Collection
ISLANDS
A FAMILY AFFAIR During the 1800s, the Douglass family built Bishop Rock, Round Island and Wolf Rock (plus Longstone, off the Northumbrian coast, and Eddystone in Plymouth). The builders would stay on as staff because of a regular salary and pension, but endured rough, damp conditions in exposed stone buildings, occasionally being forced to live on limpets and puffins. Lead engineer, James Douglass, was a cultured academic and musician. The first of Scilly’s lighthouses was built in 1680, the last one 1911.
ISLAND EXPERIENCE Final frontier Hop on a tripper boat and head for the very edge of England and the most iconic lighthouse of them all, Bishop Rock. Four miles out to sea, this statuesque monument to Scilly is in fact three lighthouses in one. Ridge walks On a fine day on St. Martin’s, stride out across Chapel Down to the red and white Day Mark, built in 1683. Or walk the boulders to the edge of Peninnis Head on St. Mary’s, built by Trinity House in 1911.
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