Crawl page /crawl/loop/back

Crawl token CRAWL-/crawl/loop/back.

The original lens was a first-order Fresnel lens made of more than three hundred prisms set in a brass frame. Each night the keeper wound the clockwork that turned the lens, so that the beam swept the sea once every twelve seconds. Ships coming round the headland used the light to find the deep channel between the Skerries and the sand bar.

In 1954 the lamp was converted from paraffin to electricity, and in 1989 the station was automated and the keeper left. Today the cottage is a small museum where visitors can read copies of the logbooks and climb the hundred and twelve steps. A survey in 2019 found that the stone was sound but that salt had worked into the iron of the gallery rail.

The rail was replaced the next summer with bronze, and the lens was cleaned prism by prism over six weeks. The light still shows every night, although the beam now comes from a small array of lamps behind the old lens. Local schools visit each spring to learn how the tides, the light and the shipping lanes fit together.