About the trust
Founded by people who refused to let the lights go dark.
In 1896, retired keepers and coast families formed the Wickstone Trust to look after the towers the coast authority was ready to abandon. A hundred and thirty years later, the same promise holds.
The Meridian Coast was never an easy posting. The towers stand on headlands, on tidal rocks, and on iron legs in open water, and the people who kept them kept them alone. When automation came, the lights survived; the keepers' way of life did not.
The trust was founded in 1896, long before anyone worried about automation, as a benevolent fund for keepers' families. It became a preservation charity in the 1960s, when decommissioning meant demolition and nobody else was going to stop it. Today the trust owns, leases, or maintains all eight lights on the coast, staffed by three full-time keepers and a rotating bench of volunteers.
We do not romanticize the work. Painting a tower takes a full summer. Re-silvering a lens takes eleven months. Winding Wickstone Head's clockwork takes 270 turns, every evening, and Miles High has done it in sleet. That is the job, and the job is the point.
How the trust is run
A board of nine, elected by the membership, meets quarterly at the Skerrow Point archive. The accounts are published every January. No light is ever sold, leased commercially, or given a rooftop bar. We have turned down four such offers and would turn down a fifth.
1848 to now
-
1848
Wickstone Head Light is first lit.
-
1861
Brindle Rock Light is built on the tidal causeway.
-
1874
Skerrow Point opens; the last crewed light on the coast.
-
1896
The Wickstone Trust is founded by retired keepers and coast families.
-
1963
Old Halloway is decommissioned.
-
1987
Skerrow Point is automated; its keepers' cottages pass to the trust.
-
2004
The trust re-roofs Old Halloway and opens the lantern museum.
-
2026
Eight lights under care, 214 member households, one working clockwork lens.
Who does the work
Miles High
Thirty-one years on the coast. Winds the Wickstone Head clockwork nightly and teaches every new volunteer the 270 turns.
Cass Holloway
Twenty-two years. Runs the winter maintenance weekends and has re-bedded the Brindle Rock door hinge more times than anyone will admit.
Ana Reyes-Lund
Twenty-seven years. Re-silvered the Skerrow lens and keeps the trust's archive of lens drawings.