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Neil Hargreaves was a light keeper for Trinity House in England from 1974-1988, and he is the founder and chairman of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers. Neil, who was originally from Lancashire, spent the first two years of his light keeping career on light vessels, mostly the Newarp lightship off the Norfolk coast in southwest England. Neil’s first appointment as an assistant lighthouse keeper was at the Smalls Lighthouse, a wave-swept granite tower on a rock about 20 miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire. After two years at the Smalls station, he spent seven years on the Inner Dowsing tower – a converted coal rig – in the North Sea off England’s east coast.

Neil’s final three years working for Trinity House were spent traveling around to various light stations in England, Wales, and the Channel Islands. He spent time at Longships, Souter, Wolf Rock, and several other stations. His last station as a keeper was Portland Bill on the Dorset coast. Neil founded the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, or ALK, in 1988, and he serves as its chairman. The ALK manages a lighthouse museum on the south coast of England. The group also runs lighthouse tours and produces a quarterly journal called Lamp.

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Lighthouses are seen around the world as a symbol of hope, guidance, and strength along with lots of other positive qualities. The playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They are built only to serve.” In recognition of that, Light Hearted will be doing occasional segments called “Be a Lighthouse,” discussing people and organizations who are being lighthouses, or beacons of hope, in our communities.

The first “Be a Lighthouse” segment focuses on a nonprofit organization on the New Hampshire Seacoast. Gather serves those in the community experiencing hunger by providing nutritious food through innovative distribution programs. The organization also collaborates with community partners to address the root causes of hunger throughout the Seacoast in New Hampshire and Maine. Seneca Adam Bernard is the associate executive director of Gather.

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Following is the transcript of the interview with Neil Hargreaves.

JEREMY

I’m speaking today with Neil Hargreaves, who is a former lighthouse keeper in England and also the founder of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers. You know, I was reading some interviews with you lately. And in one of the interviews, you talked about how you worked on fishing trawlers before you became a lighthouse keeper. I’m sure that was an interesting job that could probably be pretty scary at times.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah. It was a dangerous job. I sailed out of Fleetwood and then I ended up on deep sea in the Faroes in Iceland. That was a beautiful sight to see when I first saw Iceland, and these white mountains rising sheer out of the sea with pink tints on the top. Absolutely magical. But, unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to land at the time, because it was during the time of the Cod Wars with Iceland. We had the Icelandic gunboats trying to cut our nets away.

JEREMY

But there must have been some heavy seas you encountered at times.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean there was one trip, we ended up sailing right around Iceland. The skipper kept sailing north and right to the top to escape the weather. The weather was that bad. There was one sea, the vessel actually keeled over and half the boat deck was underwater. But it was pretty close, I think, that one. I only did it two years before I transferred over to lighthouses.

JEREMY

You worked on the lightships at first, but what, what exactly led you to work for Trinity House? Was being a lighthouse keeper or being a lightship sailor — were those things you aspired to before that?

NEIL HARGREAVES

I can’t say it was, to be honest, Jeremy. Some guys I knew, I was having a drink with them in the bar and they worked for Trinity House. And they got talking and they told me they were looking for guys on the lightships. That’s how it came about.

JEREMY

After being on the trawlers like that, I imagine being on the lightships was a fairly calm way of life, but it must have had its interesting moments. What, what was life like on the lightships?

NEIL HARGREAVES

It was less dangerous, a bit. But having said that, the lightships in the U.K, they can’t move under their own steam. The ship’s out there for three years, for a month on and a month off, but they take them in every three years for drydock and repair. The North Sea’s only a shallow sea. So when the wind’s whipped up, it could be quite choppy. If you got wind and tide in a certain way, the lightship could behave like in a corkscrew motion. So luckily I was never seasick either on the trawlers or on the lightships. But it was a different experience to lighthouses because on a lightship, during fog, you watch out on deck because you had to listen out for the fog signal when it blasted. If a vessel was close by, on the rebound, it would come back to you. And you could sort of find out show far away that vessel was. And if it was too close, you’d have to call everybody out in case it was going to hit you. Small coasters used to come along. The vessels I was on, the Newarp, it did end up getting hit twice. Luckily that was after I’d left.

JEREMY

So after a couple of years on the lightships, and then after your training course, you became a supernumerary keeper. That’s not a term we use here. From what I gather, it was kind of like being an apprentice keeper. So can you explain a little bit about that? What did you do as a supernumerary keeper?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, that that’s correct. It was going around various lighthouses, to begin with, before you got specific a posting — still learning different engines, because they had different engines at different stations, different lights at different stations. I even got to, to go on an old IOV light at St. Mary’s, the old incandescent oil burner. That was something in itself. You know, it was like being back in time. The very first lighthouse I was sent to was Souter Point on the northeast coast and the second one was St. Mary’s Island. That was a great little island. It was connected by a causeway that was covered at high water. One of the keepers on there had canoes so we used to go out sea canoeing. That was great. After there I went to St. Ann’s Lighthouse, and then Cromer. But it wasn’t long that I actually got forced into Smalls because of the time spent on the lightships previous.

JEREMY

After your time as a supernumerary keeper, you were an assistant at the Smalls Lighthouse, which is extremely remote. It’s the most remote station operated by Trinity House, I believe.

NEIL HARGREAVES

That’s correct.

JEREMY

It’s about twenty miles off the coast of Wales. Life there must have been really interesting.

NEIL HARGREAVES

You were certainly felt like you were at one with nature, that sort of thing, being out there, you know. You just had the sound of the sea and the seagulls. It’s quite something.

JEREMY

Did you enjoy it?

NEIL HARGREAVES

I did. I did to begin with, I did.

JEREMY

Mm-hmm —  to begin with?                                    

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the most part, the guys were a great set of blokes. Great camaraderie on the job, you know. But there was just one particular chap on this station. He wasn’t there when I first went there, he came later. And he was just a complete racist, a bigot, homophobic. You name it, he was it, you know? Yeah. Couldn’t even watch TV without some derogatory comment coming in. So I just had enough and I wrote to Trinity House saying you need to get me off there. They did. They gave me a transfer to the Inner Dowsing. But there’s an end story to this, Jeremy. After seven years on the Inner Dowsing, the last three years they put me on the pool, which meant I got sent around relieving people were off sick or on holiday. A month here, a month there. So I got to see a lot more lighthouses than I would have done normally. And one of the superintendents said, would you like to go to Souter again? He said that there’s just one thing. He said the principal keeper that’s there now was this particular chap. He said you don’t have to go, but would you be okay with going? I said, yeah. And sure enough, we ended up going for a drink together. You know?

JEREMY

Wow.

NEIL HARGREAVES

That was the end to that one.

JEREMY

Yeah, that’s good story. I guess people can change for the better. That’s good to hear. Yeah. But it’s a shame you had to transfer there because, as you said, most of the guys were great at the Smalls. Going back to that, how many keepers were typically assigned to the Smalls? What kind of rotation did you have there?

NEIL HARGREAVES

It was only three in the crew. We had the principal keeper and two assistant keepers. The reason they made it three on the crew, it was actually on the Smalls Lighthouse way back in the 1800s when there were only two keepers, one of the keepers died. The other one fearing that he’d be blamed for killing him, kept his body there. First inside then he had to put it outside. The weather was bad. They didn’t have radio communication back then either. So he had to wait until the relief boat came to get him off. By the time the relief boat came, it been delayed due to bad weather. This guy had gone insane. After that, they decided to put three keepers on the station. There’s been several plays about this particular story. I remember watching one on TV. It was quite good.

JEREMY

It inspired a couple of movies as well. Including the recent movie, The Lighthouse — the plot was very different. But I read that the writer/director was inspired by that incident. And I was going to ask you about that. When you were there at the Smalls, was that something you and the other keepers knew about? Did that enter your thinking at all when you were there?

NEIL HARGREAVES

No, it didn’t really enter our thoughts. As I say, we had such a good rapport with each other. There was no worries. As I say, it was great camaraderie amongst the majority, you know. You had oddball as you do anywhere, you know?

JEREMY

Sure. Yeah. So it’s obviously a very isolated place. Do you recall any specific times in storms or especially high seas at the Smalls?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yes. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I’ve experienced a wave actually coming right over the top of the tower.

JEREMY

Which is how tall?

NEIL HARGREAVES

It’s 120 feet. The tower would actually shake when that would hit. But it had to have that give, that’s how it was designed. Because if it didn’t, it would snap. It was built into it. Amazing feats of engineering, absolutely. The water would wash down on the light and would come back through the windows. It was quite an experience. And that happened at the Longships as well, off Land’s End.

JEREMY

What were the living quarters like in those towers?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Quite cramped. You only had one bedroom for all three of you. Of course, there was always one on watch, you know? So there was only was only two that turned it at maximum. The middle watch was midnight to four in the morning. So that’s when you did your ablutions. You didn’t have a shower or anything. It was just a wash at the sink in the kitchen. You didn’t realize at the time when you were there, but it wasn’t until you got ashore that you could smell it on your clothes. It was a great job, Jeremy. It was the best job I ever had, to be honest.

JEREMY

Your water supply at those places was a cistern in the bottom of the tower, right? And was that delivered to you? Or how did that work?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, that, that was delivered by the tenders, one of our ships. We had tanks down on the rock, oil tanks. They supplied water as well. That was once a month.

JEREMY

Those oil tanks must have been pretty heavy duty to withstand those seas there.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Well, the helicopter used to land on top of the oil tank because it was the only the only flat bit. At the Smalls you always had to keep an eye open for a rogue wave coming and the ones. Once when he had to take off in the hurry, he said I’ll have to go. He took off. A wave came over. It washed one of the guys’ suitcases into the — in between our rock and the next rock, sort of thing. He jumped in and got after it. So then I had to fish him out along with his suitcase.

JEREMY

I was going to say, it’s a good thing that the suitcase was all that swept away. And it sounds like he was pretty lucky to survive that.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

JEREMY

I know a, a lot of keepers, other people I’ve interviewed like Richard Cummins, who was a lighthouse keeper in Ireland for quite a while, talked about the wildlife. Ian Duff in Scotland, also. What kind of wildlife did you have? Was there anything of significance around someplace like the Smalls?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Well, we had a colony of seals there and they used to come swimming into the gut and pop their heads up and be taking the lot on what was going on, what we were doing, you know. So they were quite comical and it was always interesting to watch those. Yeah. And the different seabirds as well, seeing the gannets dive and that sort of thing. A lot of keepers actually became birdwatchers. Just to hear the sound of the gulls and the waves washing on the rock out there, it was just —

JEREMY

Probably go to sleep with those sounds, right? I remember spending a night at Boston Light in Boston Harbor. I got to sleep on the couch in the keeper’s house. And I was so aware of the gulls all night. They were so loud just outside the house, but I guess you get used to that, probably fairly fast.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Well, yeah. When you consider, you have to get used to the louder — much louder — fog signal going.

JEREMY

Right. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the fog signal at the Smalls. What type of signal was that?

NEIL HARGREAVES

It was diaphone, same as on the lightships. Really loud, with a grunt at the end, sort of thing. You just got used to it. You got to sleep. No problem. You know, it’s funny because sometimes it suddenly stops and it was just silent. You might wake up with the silence.

JEREMY

I’ve heard that before. It’s the silence that, that woke you up. I heard a diaphone horn at Souter that they still operate on occasion. And it’s pretty impressive. And I can’t imagine living inside a tower where you had one of those. Was it difficult to operate? Of course it was compressed air. Right? And probably not all that hard to start up. Is that right?

NEIL HARGREAVES

You had a much bigger engine you had to start up and then let it build up to a certain pressure, then wind it in and away you’d go. Some of them were crank start – you had to turn the handle. They ended up putting push button start on.

JEREMY

So after the Smalls, as you mentioned before, you moved to the Inner Dowsing Light, for reasons you mentioned before. And you actually spent seven years there. It’s an unusual place. I don’t know if you could exactly call it a lighthouse, certainly a light station. Certainly not anybody’s idea of a traditional lighthouse. But, first of all, for people who don’t know, can you explain where the Inner Dowsing is? Geographically?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, geographically it’s just off The Wash off the east coast of England. It’s off the Lincolnshire coast. And it was actually an ex-coal rig. They actually used a light vessel lantern on the top of it. The helipad was on top as well on the other corner. Being an ex-rig, of course, it was a much bigger than the granite tower that I’d just been on the previous two years. We actually had flushing toilets. We had showers. There was a TV room, as well as a kitchen. It was a dining area as well, a separate radio room, and other rooms. The engine room was in the center. You also had a crane on there to operate when the boat came along, the tenders. Although all the reliefs were done by helicopter. On their annual inspection we’d have to winch them from the little motor launch that they’d come across in onto the deck, which was about 120 foot up.

JEREMY

In this country. We had a bunch of towers that were sometimes referred to as Texas towers, kind of like oil rigs. And they seemed very similar. As you said, it was a former coal rig and I guess they would explore for undersea coal.

NEIL HARGREAVES

That is correct. That was up off the northeast coast where this rig was being used. There used to be some miners’ cottages next to the lighthouse at one time.

JEREMY

I’ve certainly heard about a lot of keepers who had hobbies of one kind or another to pass the off hours when there wasn’t work they had to do. Or when they’re keeping watch certainly — hobbies probably helped you stay awake when you were keeping watch. But did you have any hobbies you used to pass the time?

NEIL HARGREAVES

I did. Yeah. One of the old masters of a light vessel taught me how to put ships in bottles. So I got quite adept at doing those. I only did them on the light vessels, for some reason. I didn’t carry it on when I transferred onto lighthouses. I used to do a lot of reading. I did bit of photography as well, of course.I quite a lot out there, to be honest.

JEREMY

I bet! Those are good places to read, I would say. I don’t know if you know Richard Cummins, the former Irish keeper who makes amazing ships in bottles and other models and posts a lot of the pictures on his Facebook page. I don’t know if that’s something you’re aware of.

NEIL HARGREAVES

I saw the interview you did with him. Most keepers had hobbies. Some were artists, who were quite good some of them. And some had various hobbies like rug making, some even knitted.

JEREMY

I’ve heard that. Yeah. Your last three years after the Inner Dowsing and the Smalls and your lightship time, you spent three years with Trinity house — I think you alluded to this earlier — but you traveled around to a bunch of different lighthouses. And I believe you mentioned a couple earlier, but during that period, were there kind of favorite places you had?

NEIL HARGREAVES

I think Alderney was my favorite, in the Channel Islands, I did a couple of the other Channel Islands lights as well — Casquets and Hanois. But Alderney was on the island itself of Alderney, of course. So you to meet all the local people, which was great. You were immediately, being a lighthouse keeper, wherever you went to in the country, you were immediately made welcome by the local community as one of them. Because you were there to protect their fishermen, their yachtsman. You know, was another great part of the job. And at Alderney, the lighthouse was also the 999 call center for the island. We were the only place manned 24/7. So we used to turn out the fire, police, or ambulance. The local bobby – copper – used to call in on his rounds – call in for a chat at the lighthouse, have a cup of tea. So it was great.

JEREMY

What exactly led you the end of your career with Trinity House?

NEIL HARGREAVES   

The automation program, sadly. We could see the writing on the wall as soon as the computer chip came along, you know.

JEREMY

How do you feel about lighthouse automation?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Well, being a keeper, I’d have to say, you know —  I mean, we can see progress, you know, we know why it’s going to GPS and all that, but it’s like one skipper said to us, he said, “GPS is all really well.” He said, “But it tells me where I think I am.” He said, “When I see a lighthouse, I know where I am.” things are changing all the time, aren’t they? You know.

JEREMY

Sure are. I guess it’s progress, but you often lose things along the way with so-called progress.

NEIL HARGREAVES

The thing was, I mean, the other service keepers give, of course, is you were on hand in real emergencies. You know, whether it be yacht in distress, or in couple cases where climbers were stuck on the rocks where there was a lighthouse. One of our keepers actually ended up getting a medal for bravery. He ended up doing two rescues on the cliffs at South Stack Lighthouse. He actually went down and kept the bloke’s head up out of the water while help came.

JEREMY

Well, that’s why in Canada they still have more than 50 staffed lighthouses. Even though the lights are automated, they like having the people there to keep an eye on things. Although the government keeps threatening to take the keepers off, but there’s enough outcry to keep them there, at least so far.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah. That’s good to hear. Another thing that’s been done over here, of course, is they’ve got rid of all the Coast Guards. Most of our Coast Guard stations are gone. So there’s no eyes there either.

JEREMY

So you have volunteer lifesavers.

NEIL HARGREAVES

The Coast Watch. A volunteer group sprang up. It’s not as heavy on the ground as what the old Coast Guards were, you know. They’re fewer and far between. So, I mean, at least it’s something, you know, but they’re just volunteers.

JEREMY

Yeah. So I wanna talk a bit about the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, but I’m also wondering since you left Trinity house in 1988 and started the ALK around that time, what else have you been doing in the years since then?

NEIL HARGREAVES

I ended up moving down to London. I was living in Suffolk at the time. Shortly after I did leave, before I moved down to London, [?] contacted me and asked me if I’d consider being attendant for Southwold (?) Lighthouse. So that’s just a part-time job. You just have to go along every so often, keep it tidy and clean, and show anybody around when it was requested. So I did that for two years after I came out of the service. But then I had to move down to London for full time work and actually went into security at the press association on Fleet Street in London. From there I was transferred to Powergen’s registered office in the city of London, where I did security. And while I was there, I ended up getting a job in facilities at PowerGen at that registered office. So I ended up looking after all the staff there and kept them all supplied with their office requirements. But it was a really good little friendly crowd there. I was there nine years in total, but then redundancy came along again. They said we’ll retrain you to do whatever job you fancy doing. I took them up on it. So I retrained as a housing officer. I did the course got the certificate and I ended up getting the job as a housing officer. So that was quite interesting. It was only for two years, because redundancy came along again. And after that I ended up running a dry cleaners. And then from that ended up being manager of a coffee shop and gift shop. And then the big recession came along and for the last six years of my working life I was actually a carer.

JEREMY

Say that again? You were –

NEIL HARGREAVES

A carer — looking after old people.

JEREMY

Oh, right. Okay. I thought that’s what you said at first. Yeah.

NEIL HARGREAVES

But it was a quite interesting, challenging job, you know?

JEREMY

Sure.

NEIL HARGREAVES

It was worthwhile doing.

JEREMY

I bet. Yeah. So what led you to start the Association of Lighthouse Keepers in 1988?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Like I said, the, the camaraderie in the job had been great. It wasn’t a job I wanted to just walk away from and forget about. I mean, right from the start we collected our own archives as well. Schools come to us, colleges for information, we had one girl doing a dissertation on fog signals. At first, of course, it was just from people within the service. But when I left, there were only 174 keepers left at the time when I left. But there were also people in the Trinity House depots that joined — we had our own mechanics and electricians back then as well. Some of them joined. Even people at headquarters joined. But then we had such an interest from general members of the public that we decided to open membership up to anyone interested in lighthouses. And to be honest, Jeremy, I think it’s just as well we did because there’s not many of us keepers left now at all. The bulk of the trustees now on the board is made up of enthusiasts. They do a great job, sterling job. And the good thing about it is, over the years, when we’ve grown our lighthouse tours, you get the regular tour goers going on these tours and to see the smiles on their faces when they meet up with their friends again — that’s been a huge bonus of it as well, you know?

JEREMY

Yeah. Well, you mentioned the tours and the archives. I know that the ALK also does a magazine, Lamp, which is fantastic. A lot of history in there. How often does that magazine come out?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Quarterly.

JEREMU

Quarterly. Yeah. So if you get a membership in the ALK, you, you get the magazine, right?

NEIL HARGREAVES

You get the magazine, and a lapel badge, and a patch.

JEREMY

Back to the archives you mentioned, is that just for UK lighthouses or is it kind of worldwide?

NEIL HARGREAVES

It’s mostly UK ones, as you can imagine, because a lot of stuff has been sent in by UK members, but we do have odd bits from other places, yeah, around the world. Books as well from around the world.

JEREMY

The ALK also runs a museum right. In Hampshire. Is that correct?

NEIL HARGREAVES

That’s correct. Yeah. It’s inside Hurst Castle. Hurst Castle itself is run by English Heritage.

JEREMY

That’s H U R S T as opposed to — we have a property known as the Hearst Castle in California. William Randolph Hearst, H E A R S T.

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yeah, it’s H U.

JEREMY

And what is there again at the museum there?

NEIL HARGREAVES

We’ve got various lamps on display, various lighting equipment. We’ve got a mockup of The Needle’s kitchen in the museum as well. And we also show maps of all the lights around the UK. And it also shows people the refraction, the lens we’ve got there, from the prisms. The small team we have there now, they’re really dedicated. And they like to refresh things, you know, every so often. And they also look after to the Trinity House room that’s down there as well.

JEREMY

So I’ve got a couple of final questions for you, and these are for bonus points. Okay. What was the best thing about being a lighthouse keeper?

NEIL HARGREAVES

The fact that you knew, the job you was there to do, you knew that you was there to save lives, irrespective of where those sailors come from, whether they came from America, India, China, wherever. You were there to save people’s lives. And that was, you know, the real benefit of doing that job. And like I mentioned earlier, when you got sent to anywhere in the country, you might have been new when you got there, you were soon welcomed into the local community as one of them. It was great experience. It really was.

JEREMY

Well, I think I know the answer to this last question. But looking back, would you do it again?

NEIL HARGREAVES

Yes.

JEREMY

Didn’t hesitate there.

NEIL HARGREAVES

For sure.

JEREMY

Well, Neil, Hargreaves, it’s really fun talking to you. And I know we just have scratched the surface today and maybe we need to do a part two, part three, or whatever in the future, but I’m sure there’s a lot more stories we haven’t covered today. And I’d like to talk more about the ALK at some point, too. But I do really appreciate you spending this time with me today. It’s really, really great talking with you. Thank you, Neil.

NEIL HARGREAVES

You’re welcome. And thank you for inviting me along, Jeremy.

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