St Catherine's Oratory

St Catherine’s Oratory stands on St Catherine’s Down above the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Built in the early 14th century, it is the only surviving medieval lighthouse in Britain and the second oldest after the Roman tower at Dover. Lord Walter de Godeton ordered the stone tower as penance for taking wine from a wrecked ship in 1313. Locals call it the Pepperpot because its shape resembles a pepper shaker. The Church courts ordered the light to guide ships after de Godeton’s theft. A small chantry chapel was added so a priest could say Mass for sailors in danger. The four-storey octagonal tower has thick walls and a square interior. It was finished in 1328, a year after de Godeton died. By the 16th century the Dissolution of the Monasteries ended its service. In the 18th century Sir Richard Worsley reinforced the structure with four large buttresses to stop it collapsing. Nearby lie the remains of a later lighthouse begun in 1785 but abandoned because fog often hid the light. A Bronze Age burial mound nearby was dug up in 1925. Visitors walk up the grassy down to the low stone tower. The Pepperpot’s small windows and buttresses show how it has survived for seven centuries. The hilltop offers wide views over farmland and sea. Close by are the ruins of the unfinished 18th-century lighthouse, known as the salt cellar. Below, the modern St Catherine’s Lighthouse stands on the point after a wreck in 1837. The contrast between the old tower and its newer neighbour marks seven hundred years of guiding ships past the island’s southern tip.