Belle Tout Lighthouse

Repeated wrecks below Beachy Head produced calls for a light from the late seventeenth century, but action came only after the East Indiaman Thames struck the rocks. Sussex landowner and politician John Fuller, who had seen the wreck, used money and influence to help the campaign. A temporary wooden light opened in 1828 before work began on the permanent granite tower.

Thomas Stevenson designed the permanent lighthouse and Aberdeen granite was used for its round tower. Construction began in 1829, with the lamp entering service in 1834. Keepers worked on the cliff top, but their well-tended light could still disappear in sea mist or be screened from ships sailing too close beneath the cliff.

Those sight-line failures led Trinity House to replace Belle Tout with Beachy Head Lighthouse at sea level in 1902. Sold into private ownership, Belle Tout later suffered damage when Canadian gunners trained nearby during the Second World War. Coastal erosion threatened it again in 1999, when the whole 850-ton building was pushed 17 metres inland on greased rails by powerful lifting equipment.

The old tower and rebuilt living space remain on the cliff, though the original lantern level has gone. Its domestic use has helped keep it occupied after its navigation work ended. Most importantly, its shifted position survives as physical evidence that the landmark was saved from a retreating edge rather than rebuilt as a copy.

Belle Tout links three different battles with the coast: warning ships, surviving war damage and escaping erosion. Its failure also directly explains why the later red-and-white tower stands below Beachy Head instead of above it. The 1999 move turned a threatened former lighthouse into a widely known example of saving a whole historic building.