How daredevil Victorians built Beachy Head lighthouse
Never-before-seen images showing fearless workers building the lighthouse at the base of Beachy Head cliffs have been found.
The stomach-churning pictures depict engineers risking their lives on rickety ladders fixed to the sheer 500ft cliff in East Sussex to reach the building site below.
Others show a group of men hitching a lift in an open-top cable trolley from the cliff top, with two of them precariously perched on the outer edge.
Without a hard hat, high-visibility jacket or harness in sight, the 117-yearold images, in the form of dozens of magic lantern slides, would have any modern health and safety inspector reaching for their clipboard.
As well as the dangerous working practices, Victorian builders were exposed to, the archive illustrates the incredible feat of engineering that went into building the 141ft lighthouse.
It was made from 3,600 tons of granite cut into one and two-ton blocks in Cornwall before being transported by train to Eastbourne.
The huge blocks were taken to the cliff edge to be hoisted by cable down to the building site at the base of the chalk cliffs.
The 71 slides are up for auction next Thursday with a guide price of £5,000.
Mimi Connell-lay, of David Lay Auctions of Penzance, said: “A health and safety official would have a field day if they encountered working conditions like these today. Some of these pictures are not for the faint-hearted.
“The men and materials were winched down in a cable car or aerial ropeway from the top of the cliffs. The site was also accessed by a hair-raising series of ladders, that ran all the way up the cliffs of Beachy Head.”
The lighthouse was built between 1900 and 1902 to replace a clifftop base which was often rendered useless by mist.
The red-and-white-striped tower was manned by three lighthouse keepers until 1983, when it became automated.