The story below is completely fictitious, but is very well done. From her idea the author has created a delightful lighthouse home! Maybe one of my readers can create another one which we can reprint here. How would you decorate your own fictitious lighthouse?
reprinted with permission from paperbean(AT)gmail(DOT)com
The storm sent the waves rolling and the rain pelting down… She banged and banged on the solid door, hoping for some respite from the high winds and slashing rains…
The door swung open to reveal a gruff man…
I remember the setting. I don’t remember the name of the book or the author… but I remember the setting. It’s probably been 10 years since I read that book (which I no longer have!).
The gruff man lived in a renovated/restored lighthouse.
What would my lighthouse be like?
Via kopishke - http://www.kopishke.org/
(Normally I eschew homes with stairs, preferring the single storied kind. But as we all know, lighthouses are/were built extra-solidly to weather storms, gales, winds… so I think I could live there!) Continue reading Reprint – Lighthouse Homes→
Earlier this month, we revealed that the Northern Lighthouse Board was selling off three lighthouses near Stonehaven, Lossiemouth and Thurso, with price tags ranging from £75,000 to £270,000 – along with a foghorn at Girdleness, in Aberdeen. All the buildings, once a beacon for sailors and fishermen, would be ideal for those willing to spend some time and money creating an unusual home.
Rua Reidh Lighthouse, on the other hand, is ready to move in to. The keepers’ accommodation, at the foot of the tower, has been run as a successful home and holiday accommodation for years.
This B-listed home sits in a stunning location, on the cliff edge at Melvaig, around 12 miles from Gairloch on the west coast – officially named as the happiest place in the UK last week – and overlooking the Isle of Skye to the south-west, Harris to the west and Lewis to the north. It is for sale at offers over £325,000. Building of the lighthouse was started by David Stevenson, one of the famous family of lighthouse engineers, in 1910. Two years later, it was helping steer boats safely through the seas. Continue reading Reprint – Finders Keepers→
What is a Widow’s Walk? It is definitely not a new dance!
I will give you a hint – It is a fixture built onto a house. It was prevalent in the days of sailing ships, both in Italy where it originated as a style of architecture, and also in eastern American houses on the waterfront.
Here’s a legendary quote on the use of the Widow’s Walk:
The widow's walk is the fenced in balcony on the top right
The faithful and dedicated wife, performing her daily circumambulations on the cold and lonely widow’s walk: The next sail to top the horizon may well carry her husband, gone to sea these many years. But not today. The sun sets, bringing to a close her lonely vigil for this day. Perhaps, though, the much-anticipated vision will appear tomorrow and if not tomorrow, the next day. – Fishermen’s Voice
That article gives more credit to the use of the widow’s walk for fire prevention rather than for lonely widows pining for their husbands. Below in the gallery are some photos of what a Widow’s Walk looks like.
It is not necessarily a lighthouse thing, but maybe, just maybe, a lonely lighthouse widow did walk around the lantern searching for the return of her man from town with the mail and groceries in his rowboat, or late from a fishing or hunting trip. On this website there are many stories of death on the water with a lighthouse background.
By the way, The walkway around the outside of a lighthouse lantern room (for cleaning the lantern glass) is called a Gallery, and the walkway around the light inside (for lens cleaning) is called the Lantern Gallery.
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Lighthouse Watch – House Rental, North Carolina, USA. c/w widow’s walk!
Caswell Beach house rental, North Carolina, USA. Interested? Contact
1 Widow’s Walk – A widow’s walk also known as a “widow’s watch” (or roofwalk) is a railed rooftop platform often with a small enclosed cupola frequently found on 19th century North American houses. A popular romantic myth holds that the platform was used to observe vessels at sea. The name is said to come from the wives of mariners, who would watch for their spouses’ return, often in vain as the ocean took the lives of the mariners, leaving the women widows.[1] In other coastal communities, the platforms were called Captain’s Walk, as they topped the homes of the more successful captains and supposedly ship owners and captains would use them to search the horizon for ships due in port.
However, there is little or no evidence that widow’s walks were intended or regularly used to observe shipping. Widow’s walks are in fact a standard decorative feature of Italianate architecture, which was very popular during the height of the Age of Sail in many North American coastal communities. The widow’s walk is a variation of the Italianate cupola.[2] The Italianate cupola, also known as a “belvedere”, was an important ornate finish to this style, although it was often high maintenance and prone to leaks.[3]
Beyond their use as viewing platforms, they are frequently built around the chimney of the residence, thus creating access to the structure. This allows the residents of the home to pour sand down burning chimneys in the event of a chimney fire in the hope of preventing the house from burning down
I really do not know how these keep coming up, but here is a real island in the Gulf of Khambhat, India, and it is for sale! It tunrs out that it is an island full of fossil dinosaur eggs, giraffe and gigantic turtles. The owner Siddhrajsinh Raol has put the island up for sale at an undisclosed price.
June 17, 2012 – Times of India – Here is a news article on the sale with a bit more information.
Every point on this 90-acre island is riddled with fossils, some dating back 8,000 years. Fossils of two basic species of giraffes – Brahmatherium and Sivatherium – were found from the island in the 1860s. Those of the Hipparion have also been found here.
The lone lighthouse at the edge of the island only adds to its beauty. “Though the island is spread over 186 acres, the Directorate General of Lighthouse and Lightships owns the light house and its surroundings while the rest is mandatory government wasteland. I am the only private owner on the island. We have even offered the government that we could help them develop the wasteland,” says Raol.
And for the interested, here is the sales brochure. It is comically negative in its presentation, but also informative. When I was on McInnes Island lighthouse we had tides at times of twenty-two (22) feet (c, 7 meters). This gulf has tides of thirty-eight (38) feet – almost like the Bay of Funday in New Brunswick, Canada! Unbelievable!
Piram is located at 21º-35′ North and 72º-34’ East at a distance of 7.2 nautical miles south of Gogha and 4 nautical miles from the nearest part of main land. Asia’s biggest industrial belt stretching from Bharuch to Vapi is only 50 kilometres away. Diu and Daman, the famous tourist spots are only 80 nautical miles at a triangular distance, Pipavav, the major private port that is already functional is about 50 nautical miles and Mumbai, the main business centre of India is about 160 nautical miles Piram Island. – Introduction
The flow of water at the time of tide and ebb generates water current, which is the fastest in Asia, and in the world it is ranked at number two. It is like a river in spate, which reverses itself every six hours. Being part of the gulf system, the tides and ebbs at the coast of Piram are really remarkable, rising and falling by as much as 38 feet in just 6 hours which is the highest in Asia and second in the world. This is a mare natural feature in this region and makes it an exciting phenomenon. – Business Potential
Again I request, please let me know if you buy it!
The title is a tiny bit misleading. The government is not contracting to paint the lighthouse (is not doing the job themselves using government personnel as in the olden days) but is contracting out to private persons to do the work previously done by government workers.
An interesting article on the Peggys1 Cove lighthouse in Nova Scotia says:
However, dealing with the problem is not as straightforward as sending someone the tab. Peggys Cove is owned by the federal government, which is currently getting out of the lighthouse business. The Nova Scotia government is in negotiations to take over the site, but no date has been set for completion of the talks.
So who is going to paint Peggys Cove, and many other abandoned lighthouses?
One of the commenter’s on the above site made the following reply:
Here’s the link for all those interested in bidding. Go create an account on Merx and bid away your $400.00 to paint it.
Now that Merx site is very interesting. It shows Canadian Public Tenders for jobs the Canadian Government puts out for bids. I searched but could not finds anything lighthouse-related, but maybe you will have better luck. Let me know if you find anything.
There are some interesting jobs available, but one thing comes to mind. What has happened to the Public Works Department of the Canadian Government? They used to do all the painting and construction projects..Does Public Works no longer exist?
Aha! I found it! It is now called Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC). They pay me my pension, but do they do anything else? Check out PWGSC website and see if you can find out.
Not much there about painting old lighthouses. Lots on procurement and disposal though. So I guess they just buy stuff and dispose of it when no longer needed. Is any reader working for PWGSC that can better fill us in on the workings of PWGSC?
So, unless the community is going to do the work and pay for the job itself, I guess Canadian lighthouse are headed for a dim future (pun intended).
FOOTNOTE: 1Peggys Cove (2009 population: approx. 46), also known as Peggy’s Cove from 1961 to 1976, is a small rural community located on the eastern shore of St. Margarets Bay in Nova Scotia’s Halifax Regional Municipality.- Wikipedia
January 19, 2013 – As of today’s date the property has not sold!
OK, it’s NOT a lighthouse, but it is a light, and it is on your own private island. Well, it could be yours if you have $75, 000, 000 to spare! We can always dream!
If you wanted you could build your own lighthouse in the middle, but why worry, it comes with a white (W) flashing (Fl) navigational light (see LL #227 above)1 off the NW point of the island. All yours with the purchase of the island.
Take a look at the photo below!
That is James Island off Sidney, British Columbia, Canada, and it is being listed by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada for the above-mentioned price. To quote the website:
Situated only a few miles off of Sidney, James Island is in close proximity to Victoria, British Columbia’s capital city, and is easily accessed by private plane or boat. A retreat like no other, James Island compares to only a handful of international properties. Improved with a magnificent 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course, the island has been thoughtfully developed to seamlessly blend in with not only its surrounding environment, but also its history. A wide range of improvements complement the island including a masterpiece
owner’s residence of 5,000 square feet, 6 beautifully appointed guest cottages, private docks and airstrip, pool house, managers residence, a ‘western village’, and much more.
The place used to be a munitions factory for years, up until 1994, when it was sold for $19,000,000. In the end Canadian Industries Limited (CIL) used to make gunpowders and dynamite. I remember as a child seeing the signs on Vancouver Island that trespassing was forbidden.
