page_title: Spurn
section_title: Old High and Low Lights
hierarchical_section_title: Spurn / Lighthouses / Old High and Low Lights
caption_attribution_description: English: Spurn Low lighthouse, built 1852 sited at mouth of Humber
context_page_description: Spurn is a narrow sand tidal island located off the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber Estuary. It was a spit with a semi-permanent connection to the mainland, but a storm in 2013 made the road down to the end of Spurn impassable to vehicles at high tide.
  The island is over 3 miles long, almost half the width of the estuary at that point, and as little as 50 yards wide in places. The southernmost tip is known as Spurn Head or Spurn Point and is the home to an RNLI lifeboat station and two disused lighthouses. It forms part of the civil parish of Easington.
  Spurn Head covers 280 acres above high water and 450 acres of foreshore. It has been owned since 1960 by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and is a designated national nature reserve, heritage coast and is part of the Humber Flats, Marshes and Coast Special Protection Area.
context_section_description: In 1767, John Smeaton was commissioned to build a new pair of lighthouses. Smeaton's high light (a 90 feet [27 m] tower) remained in use until 1895, but there were problems (as there had been in previous years) with maintaining the low light; within a short time it had been washed away by the sea. A series of more-or-less temporary replacements were used in the years that followed, until a more solid lighthouse designed by James Walker was constructed in 1852 under the supervision of engineer Henry Norris. Unlike its predecessor this low light was built the estuary side (i.e. to the west) of the high light, rather than on the seaward side.
  Initially both lighthouses were coal-fired. In 1819 Smeaton's high light was equipped with 24 Argand lamps and reflectors); later, in 1853, it was fitted with a new Fresnel lens: a large (first-order) fixed optic by Henry Lepaute of Paris. (Prior to installation this lens had been exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851). Later, a red sector was added to the high light, which warned ships of hazards to the south ranging from Clee Ness to Sand Haile Flats.
  The low light, meanwhile, had also been fitted with oil lamps and reflectors in 1816. Then, in 1848, a small Fresnel lens (a fifth-order lenticular dioptric) had been installed, which was reused when the new tower was built in 1852.
  In 1895 both this low light and Smeaton's high light were replaced by a single lighthouse which still stands on the grass of Spurn Head. (The 1852 low light also still stands on the sandy shore of the island, though its lantern has been replaced by a large water tank. Of the old Smeaton high light only the foundations remain.)
caption: Spurn Low lighthouse, Spurn Point while still operational
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