Longstone Lighthouse

Longstone Lighthouse was designed and built by Joseph Nelson (who fifteen years earlier had worked with Daniel Alexander on building the new Inner Farne and Brownsman lighthouses). Construction was relatively swift, and the new Longstone Lighthouse was first lit on 15 February 1826. The total cost was £4,771. The tower was painted red and displayed, like its predecessor, a revolving light 'showing the full face of a reflector every 30 seconds'; it was equipped with a four-sided rotating array of twelve Argand lamps (three on each side), each mounted within a 21-inch parabolic reflector.

At the same time, in 1826, William Darling moved with his family from the old lighthouse on Brownsman Island to serve as lighthouse keeper at Longstone. On 7 September 1838 his daughter Grace spotted the paddlesteamer Forfarshire shipwrecked on a nearby rocky island. Grace Darling gained great renown when news of her part in the subsequent rescue attempt became known to the public; she and her father were both later awarded the silver medal for bravery by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.

In 1873 the lamp at Longstone was reconfigured and improved with the addition of a new optic by Chance Brothers of Smethwick, made up from a number of Fresnel lens panels, which were used to increase the transmission of light from the lamp. The new optic maintained the characteristic of a white flash every thirty seconds.
Further improvements around this time included the introduction of a fog siren in November 1876, powered by a caloric engine, sounding two blasts every two minutes (Late-19th-century photographs show a single horn rising from the roof of the engine house, which had been built within the high wall of the lighthouse compound). Around about 1890 a more powerful siren apparatus was installed, which sounded through a pair of larger vertical trumpets, and compressed air was produced using Blackstone & Co semi-diesel engines.

In 1942, during the Second World War, the fog signal house was destroyed by bombing and in 1951 a new keepers' accommodation block was built in its place. This formed part of a comprehensive upgrade, begun in 1946 and only completed in 1952, during which the light was electrified and a new optic (of an unusual 'spectacle' design) was installed (manufactured by Chance Brothers). Each side of the optic contained a 1000-watt light bulb; rotated by clockwork, it flashed once every twenty seconds and was claimed to be one of the most powerful lights on the East Coast. Three single-cylinder and two five-cylinder Gardner diesel engines were installed at this time, to provide electricity for the lamp (by way of three 5.5 kW generator sets) and compressed air for the fog siren (by way of two Reavell compressors). A new, powerful 12-inch siren was provided, sounding from a pair of conical resonators built into a cast iron turret on top of a smaller tower, built alongside the lighthouse itself. Power generated was also supplied to the dwellings and other rooms, and used to charge a reserve battery for emergency use. The works were completed in 1952, whereupon the new equipment became operational. The following year, the old first-order optic was put on display in the Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, the city where it had been manufactured eighty years earlier.

In 1990 Longstone Lighthouse became fully automated, and the keepers were withdrawn. Prior to automation an electric fog signal had replaced the siren. Until 2015 the diesel generators at Longstone were run 24 hours-a-day; in that year solar power was introduced and an LED light source was installed within the twin optic (the range of the light having been reduced from 24 to 18 nautical miles and the intensity from 645,000 candela to 116,000). The generators are now for standby use only. Longstone Lighthouse remains in use and is now monitored remotely from the Trinity House Centre at Harwich, Essex.