New Brighton Lighthouse

New Brighton Lighthouse stands on Perch Rock, a small outcrop where the River Mersey meets Liverpool Bay. It overlooks the wide sandy beach and the promenade of New Brighton, a seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. The lighthouse is a white-painted stone tower with a red lantern, built to replace an earlier wooden beacon. Its design copied the trunk of an oak tree, using dovetail joints and marble dowels in the granite blocks. The tower was finished in 1830 after three years of work by Tomkinson & Company under John Foster Jr. The lighthouse guided ships for 143 years until it was switched off in 1973. Its Argand lamps and fog bell were removed, but the structure stayed intact. In 2001 the lantern was fitted with LEDs that flashed the names of 1,517 people lost at sea, including every victim of the Titanic. A later project added solar-powered LEDs that repeat the old light pattern of two white flashes followed by one red flash. At low tide visitors can walk to the rock, but climbing the 25-foot ladder is needed to reach the entrance. Inside, the tower still shows its original clockwork mechanism and the three bells that once warned of fog. The lantern room gives views across the bay to Liverpool and along the Wirral coast. The surrounding area includes the nearby Fort Perch Rock, built in the Napoleonic era, and the busy New Brighton seafront. The lighthouse is kept in good condition by the Perch Rock Lighthouse Charity and remains a well-known landmark on the Wirral.