Difficult Times
The cost of maintaining the lighthouse proved to be very high and this, plus reluctance on the part of ship-owners to part with their voluntary payments lead to a situation were Clayton and Blake could not afford to keep the fire kindled at the top of the Cromer tower. Nevertheless the Cromer Lighthouse was still of some use as a beacon and was marked on Admiralty charts as “a lighthouse but no fire kept in it”. With the Clayton tower falling into disrepair, the owner of the land at Foulness, Nathaniel Life, was convinced that a Lighthouse repaired and maintained was essential at the site. In 1719 a new patent was granted. Dues were set to shipping at the rate of a farthing per ton of general cargo and a halfpenny per chaldron (25 cwt) of Newcastle coal. Nathaniel Life and Edward Bowell jointly received a 61 year lease from Trinity House at a rental of £100 on the undertaking that Nathaniel Life would pass the lighthouse plus one acre of land in to the ownership of Trinity House at the end of the 61 years. The lighthouse now maintained a coal fire enclosed in the Lantern.
Read more about this topic: Cromer Lighthouse
Famous quotes containing the words difficult and/or times:
“The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new—whether it be the settlement of new lands or the initiation of new ways of life—is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Laws are silent in times of war.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)