Lighthouses
Two lighthouses, each called the Pharos, were built soon after the conquest. Proposals of their date range from 50 (only seven years after the invasion of 43), 80 or (since the building includes tiles identical to the mansio in the town built at that date) c.138, though the general consensus is for a 1st century AD date. They were sited on the two heights (Eastern Heights and Western Heights) and modelled on the one built for Caligula's aborted invasion at Boulogne.
The one on the Eastern Heights still stands in the grounds of Dover Castle to 80 feet (24 m) high close to its original height, and has been adapted for use as the bell tower of the adjacent castle church of St Mary de Castro. What little remains of the western lighthouse is called the Bredenstone or the Devil's Drop of Mortar after the putative nearby lost village of Braddon, within Drop Redoubt on Dover Western Heights - it was covered in the 18th century building works but then rediscovered in fresh works in the 1860s, and was the traditional site of the investiture of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
Read more about this topic: Dubris
Famous quotes containing the word lighthouses:
“the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell
buoys,
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in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor
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—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
“The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)