As with last week, I decided to go with a well-known, oft-visited, and oft-photographed lighthouse again this week. This one is named La Corbière, which might make one think it is France. But no, it is actually located on an island on the island of Jersey, which in fact is much closer to France than the main landform on which England resides. (Where is that, exactly? Right here.)
Wait, look again! It's on a peninsula on the island of Jersey. Must be low tide. (Switch to the satellite view in Google Maps above and you can see where the frequently-submerged land that connects the lighthouse island to the mainland is located.)
La Corbière has a few distinctions, one of them being that it's the first reinforced concrete lighthouse built in England. (But Jersey is not officially a part of England/UK, it's a "self-governing state", though it does recognize the monarchy. So is it really the first reinforced concrete lighthouse in England? You make the call.
Here's a Web site about it, though they can't spell "concrete" consistently. Must be a French translation thing.
Here are the main facts, from the Lighthouse Directory, of course:
"1874 (John Coode). Active; focal plane 36 m (119 ft); white or red light, depending on direction, 5 s on, 5 s off. 19 m (62 ft) round concrete block tower with lantern and gallery, painted white. Fog horn (4 blasts, long-short-long-short, every 60 s); the signal is the Morse code for "C," representing the name of the lighthouse. This was the first British lighthouse to be built using concrete. The lighthouse is perched atop a rock just off the southwestern tip of Jersey. It is accessible by a causeway at low tide, but visitors must take care not to be stranded by the incoming tide (an alarm sounds to warn visitors when it is time to return)."Enough with the text. Let's get to the pics.
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| At high tide |
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| At low tide |
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| by Danny Evans |
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