page_title: Harwich
section_title: Lighthouses
hierarchical_section_title: Harwich / Lighthouses
caption_attribution_description: English: High Lighthouse, Harwich The tall one of a pair of unused Lighthouses in Harwich.
context_page_description: Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest, Colchester to the southwest and Clacton-on-Sea to the south. It is the northernmost coastal town within Essex.
  Its position on the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers and its usefulness to mariners as the only safe anchorage between the Thames and the Humber led to a long period of maritime significance, both civil and military. The town became a naval base in 1657 and was heavily fortified, with Harwich Redoubt, Beacon Hill Battery, and Bath Side Battery.
  Harwich is the likely launch point of the Mayflower which carried English Puritans to North America, and is the presumed birthplace of Mayflower captain Christopher Jones.
  Harwich today is contiguous with Dovercourt and the two, along with Parkeston, are often referred to collectively as Harwich.
context_section_description: At least three pairs of lighthouses have been built over recent centuries as leading lights, to help guide vessels into Harwich. The earliest pair were wooden structures: the High Light stood on top of the old Town Gate, whilst the Low Light (featured in a painting by Constable) stood on the foreshore. Both were coal-fired.
  In 1818 these were replaced by stone structures, designed by John Rennie Senior, which can still be seen today (they no longer function as lighthouses: one houses the town's maritime museum, the other is (in 2015) also being converted into a museum). They were owned by General Rebow of Wivenhoe Park, who was able to charge 1d per ton on all cargo entering the port, for upkeep of the lights. In 1836 Rebow's lease on the lights was purchased by Trinity House, but in 1863 they were declared redundant due to a change the position of the channel used by ships entering and leaving the port, caused by shifting sands.
  They were in turn replaced by the pair of cast iron lights at nearby Dovercourt; these too remain in situ, but were decommissioned (again due to shifting of the channel) in 1917.
caption: The Harwich High Lighthouse of 1818
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