Whitby High Light

HAWSKER-CUM-STAINSACRE LING HILL NZ 91 SW 1/149 Whitby High Light - II Lighthouse and attached keepers' cottages. 1857-58; cottages extended in C20. By James Walker for Trinity House. Red brick, rendered and painted white; green-painted chamfered plinth and dressings. Painted corrugated iron lantern with painted iron gallery. Brass fittings. Slate roofs to cottages. Landward front: 1-stage octagonal tower with basement and lantern, flanked by linking bays to 1-storey, 2-window cottage fronts. Tower has 2-light window recessed in deeply splayed opening in lower stage. Above, a relief moulding of Trinity House arms. Gallery of horizontal railings and square-section standards with bulb and mushroom finials,on shaped corbels, encircles tower at lantern level. Lantern surmounted by conical cap, finial and weathervane. Linking bays have 4-panel doors beneath bracketed flat hoods. Cottage fronts have 4-pane sashes with painted sills. Cottage roofs are pyramidal with conjoined stacks at apex. Interior of tower. Basement (formerly oilroom) fitted with curved staging and furniture. Ground floor (formerly service room) has fitted furniture and contains encased clock weights for occulting mechanism in lantern. Lantern retains gallery and stairs with foliate brackets and standards respectively. Outer-door handle is traditional grasping hand. Replacement catadioptric lens of 1890 still in use, and the occulting mechanism of same date survives as back-up system to present light. Cottage extensions and peripheral buildings not of special interest. D.B.Hague and R.Christie, Lighthouses: Their Architecture, History and Archaeology. D.Jackson, Lighthouses of England and Wales. Trinity House leaflet, Whitby.

Listing NGR: NZ9288310093