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Photo by Richard Croft

Bull Point Lighthouse is a lighthouse on Bull Point, about one mile north of the village of Mortehoe in Devon. The original lighthouse was constructed in 1879 after a group of local "clergy, ship-owners, merchants and landowners" appealed to Trinity House for one. The Lighthouse gives a guide to vessels navigating off the North Devon Coast with a red sector light marking the Rockham Shoal and the Morte Stone off Morte Point.

A fog horn was added in 1919 and it was electrified in 1960.

3 Old postcard images of the original lighthouse

This one we know must have been in 1919 or later as it features the fog horn added in 1919

In September 1972, after 93 years of operation without major incident, the headland on which the lighthouse stood subsided making the structure dangerous. On 18th September 1972, the Principal Keeper reported ground movement in the area of the engine room and the passage leading to the lighthouse, and that 2" fissures were opening up. In the early hours of Sunday morning, 24th September, 15 metres of the cliff face crashed into the sea and a further 15 metres subsided steeply causing deep fissures to open up inside the boundary wall. Walls cracked and the engine/fog signal station partly collapsed, leaving it in a dangerous condition and putting the fog signal out of action.

A temporary tower was used for two years at Bull Point.

Trinity House used an old light tower from elsewhere for two years whilst a new structure was built further inland. The lighthouse was designed and built so that all the equipment from the old lighthouse was utilised and after some modification made, this was completed in 1974 at a cost of £71,000 and is currently in use. It was fully automated from completion.

The diaphone foghorn was switched off in 1988 and the lighthouse was automated in 1995. The site can be visited by an adjacent public footpath. The old lighthouse keepers' cottages are now being let out to tourists as self catering holiday establishments.

Photo by Richard Croft

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By: Keith Park	Section:  Lighthouses Section	Key:
Page Ref: Bull_Point_Lighthouse	Topic: Lighthouses	Last Updated: 06/2010

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