This weekend saw the first outing of the Travelling Pharology Archive, Lighthouse Explorers’ community-generated collection of lighthouse stories, memories and heritage.
Our debut took place in a very special setting. We were on the first floor of the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, right next to the home of Longplayer. If you’ve never experienced Longplayer, it’s a musical composition designed to play continuously for 1,000 years. It’s difficult to describe because it’s the kind of music you feel in your bones. It creates an incredible atmosphere, and it was the perfect place to introduce the Archive for the first time.
The Travelling Pharology Archive’s debut event, on the first floor of Trinity Buoy Wharf’s lighthouse.
The lighthouse is open every weekend from 11am, and on Saturday 18 July we arrived as the doors opened and got everything set up.
One thing I really wanted to try was bringing the Archive to life through costumed interpretation. Throughout the day I was dressed as Henry Winstanley, the seventeenth-century engineer, inventor and designer of the first Eddystone Lighthouse.
It was a lot of fun, and it really seemed to help get conversations started. People asked questions, shared their own experiences and often stayed much longer than I imagined they would! The Archive felt like something we were exploring together, rather than a static museum exhibit.
What was in the Archive?
The Archive itself was spread across four shelves, each looking at lighthouse heritage from a different angle, but with the overarching theme of ‘community’.
The Travelling Pharology Archive’s debut, in situ on the first floor of Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse.
The top shelf focused on Newhaven Lighthouse. Alongside photographs of the site, I talked about the skateboarders and fishermen who have made this otherwise inaccessible place their own. Although the lighthouse is closed to the public, these communities have formed their own connections with it. This lighthouse really demonstrates that the meaning of these sites grow through the ways people use and value them.
The second shelf featured an oral history interview with Ed Peppitt, which I recorded just over a year ago. Ed spoke about his remarkable journey cycling to all 327 lighthouses across England and Wales. His story gave visitors a very different way of thinking about lighthouse heritage through travel, adventure and personal experience.
The third shelf explored material from the Trinity House archive, including maps of the Harwich lighthouses, a technical drawing of one of the lights and a chapter written by an Elder Brother of Trinity House about the origins of lighthouses, with a particular focus on Harwich. These helped provide some historical background alongside the personal stories found elsewhere in the Archive.
The final shelf was a small reference library. It included Sentinels of the Sea, Ed Peppitt’s The Beacon Bike, and Gerald Butler’s The Lightkeeper, an autobiographical account of life as a lighthouse keeper. Hopefully they inspired visitors to continue exploring lighthouse history long after they left.
What’s next?
There was a steady flow of visitors throughout the day, and the hours absolutely flew by. I couldn’t believe it when I asked Hoden what time it was, and she said 1:45pm!
A huge thank you to everyone who came along and supported the Archive’s first outing. It was lovely to meet so many people, hear their own lighthouse stories and see such enthusiasm for the project.
This is only the beginning. The plan is to keep growing the Travelling Pharology Archive as it travels around the UK, collecting new stories and sharing them with new communities along the way.
Our next pop-up will be outside Harwich Maritime Museum on Saturday 15 August and Sunday 16 August, from 11am until 3pm on both days.
If you’d be interested in hosting the Archive, or if you have your own lighthouse stories or memories that you’d like to contribute, I’d love to hear from you. Just drop me an email at annie@lighthouseexplorers.com.