Gallery 2 · The Working Harbour
Harbour Lamp from Pier Head
Chance Brothers, Birmingham, 1896
Cast iron, copper, ribbed glass lens
For almost seventy years this lamp marked the end of the pier, telling ships where the harbour mouth began. Its ribbed glass lens gathered the light of a small oil flame into a beam that could be seen three miles out to sea.
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The rings of glass around the lamp are a Fresnel lens. Each ring bends the light a little more than the one inside it, so that almost all of the flame's light leaves in a flat beam rather than being lost to the sky.
Keepers climbed the pier every evening to trim the wick and fill the oil. In 1911 the lamp was converted to gas, and in 1964 it was replaced by an electric light and brought to the museum.
The green paint is the original harbour colour. It marked the side of the channel that ships kept to on their left as they came in.