{"id":3194,"date":"2008-06-10T02:15:12","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T01:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/06\/10\/old-lighthouses\/"},"modified":"2008-06-11T01:07:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T00:07:08","slug":"old-lighthouses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/06\/10\/old-lighthouses\/","title":{"rendered":"Old lighthouses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leuchtturm-welt.net\/HTML\/GBPK\/GB.HTM\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/fleetwood1.jpg\" alt=\"fleetwood1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leuchtturm-welt.net\/HTML\/GBPK\/GB.HTM\" target=\"_blank\">a collection of old postcards depicting British lighthouses<\/a>. My own fascination with these structures can be traced directly to these two particular examples. The Lower Light or Beach Lighthouse is positioned a couple of streets away from the nursing home where I was born. Although we never lived in Fleetwood, I grew up a few miles down the coast and we often made trips to this unusual port which 19th century entrepreneurs built from nothing in the 1830s.<\/p>\n<p>The lighthouses were built in the 1840s, intended to function together as a guide to ships approaching the docks through sandbanks. To me they helped augment the town&#8217;s curious edge-of-the-world quality. Fleetwood is positioned <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=53.923192,-3.015035&amp;spn=0.025,0.025&amp;t=k&amp;q=53.923192,-3.015035\" target=\"_blank\">at the end of a peninsular<\/a>, surrounded by the Irish Sea on two sides with the estuary of the River Wyre on the third. The trams which travel the length of the coast have to make a loop around a block of buildings when they reach the Pharos lighthouse and head south again. A lighthouse built in the middle of a residential street seemed completely bizarre when I was a child; <a href=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/9\/98\/PharosFwdJun2004.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">it still looks strange now<\/a>, as though it was dropped there then forgotten. Once you&#8217;ve reached it there&#8217;s nowhere left to go. (Well, unless you take the ferry over the river&#8230;.) Its modest companion is more naturally situated on the promenade nearby. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/peter_hearn\/630178369\/\" target=\"_blank\">This Flickr photo<\/a> shows how it looks today.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leuchtturm-welt.net\/HTML\/GBPK\/GB.HTM\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/fleetwood2.jpg\" alt=\"fleetwood2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/09\/06\/hungarian-water-towers\/\">Hungarian water towers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a collection of old postcards depicting British lighthouses. My own fascination with these structures can be traced directly to these two particular examples. The Lower Light or Beach Lighthouse is positioned a couple of streets away from the nursing home where I was born. Although we never lived in Fleetwood, I grew up a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/06\/10\/old-lighthouses\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Old lighthouses&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-photography"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-Pw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}