Caldy Island Lighthouse

An application was made to Trinity House in March 1827 by the traders of Carmarthen Bay to build a lighthouse. The waters around the island were used by limestone and coal traders moving materials to north Wales from the south.

A lighthouse was needed to guide ships through the difficult St Gowan Shoals and Helwick Sands. St Gowan Shoal is to the south west of Caldey Island and is a shallow reef at 10-30 metres in depth. This is not a problem if the whole area was this depth but the surrounding area is up to 60metres deep which makes this shoal a real hazard.

Helwick Sands is the east of Caldey Island and is an extension of the Gower Peninsula. Again this shallow spit of land, marked with a lightship requires clear navigation.

The lighthouse was also needed to show the entrance to the Bristol Channel for ships from America and identify it as not being the English Channel.

The Lighthouse is a squat, round, brick-lined limestone tower of 17.07 m (56 ft), with walls 0.91 m (3 ft) thick at the base and 2 ft 6 in (0.76 m) thick at the top. The light stands 64 m (210 ft) above high-water mark. It acts in conjunction with the Lundy North lighthouse to the south, and has a range of 13 nautical miles (24 km).

Trinity House converted Caldey Island Lighthouse to automatic unmanned operation in 1927; it was the last Trinity House lighthouse to be powered by acetylene gas until its modernisation in November 1997 when it was converted to mains electricity operation.

The lighthouse is now monitored and controlled from Trinity House’s Planning Centre in Harwich, Essex.

Joined to the lighthouse tower by a small corridor are the keepers cottages. These flank the Lighthouse, are two-storey, with hipped roofs, octagonal chimneys, and a one-storey linking corridor. This forms a ‘U’-shape, with the Lighthouse at the centre of the south side, and enclosed private gardens to the north. The cottages were built around 1868-70 by T. C. Harvey, C.E. The former oil store for the lighthouse is a listed structure.