Furness Peninsula, Duddon Estuary & Walney Island

Millom Ironworks, Hodbarrow Mine, Askem-in-Furness, Barrow-in-Furness and Walney Island. Fascinating area and history.

For the full interview with Peg Braithwaite and lots of other lighthouse keepers check out this channel – @PeterHalil

Peg Braithwaite is Britain’s last woman lighthouse keeper. She is often cited as Britain’s only woman Principal lighthouse keeper and Britain’s last lighthouse keeper before full automation but neither claim is true.

Even in her obituary, the claim was she was “the solitary woman principal keeper in the long and heroic history of lighthouses”. Here are a few other examples but there may well be more –

Elizabeth Wilding was P.K. at Bidston Lighthouse (Liverpool) from 1797 to 1800.
Ann Urmson was P.K. at Bidston Lighthouse (Liverpool, then Mersey Docks) from 1835 until 1869.
Elizabeth Bennett P.K. at Hoylake Upper (Liverpool) 1828-29.
Ann Jones at Leasowe Lighthouse (Liverpool, then Mersey Docks) 1854-1867.
Mary Elizabeth Williams P.K. at Leasowe Lighthouse (Mersey Docks) 1894-1908.

Possibly Mrs Cormes at Point of Ayr (Talacre, Port of Chester Trustees) c.1788.

IIRC, Cockersands also had a female keeper, Peggy Braithwaite’s sister Ella was also a lighthouse keeper, and Cromer had female keepers not long before Trinity House took it over.

Walney appears to be the last manned lighthouse, finally succumbing to full automation in 2003, nearly ten years after Peg retired and 7 years after her death.

It’s not entirely clear who was the last incumbent but it is likely to be Ian Clark, who was Peg Braithwaite’s assistant.

Another popular misconception is that North Foreland, Kent was the last manned lighthouse. The error arises because most lighthouses were operated by ‘Trinity House’ and North Foreland was indeed the last Trinity House Lighthouse to be manned.

Hello and welcome to the Great British Biking Adventures Coast Series. In this series we are travelling around the coast on our motorcycle, a Honda VFR1200X Crosstourer.

A lot of our viewers are bike enthusiasts but this series will appeal to a wider audience. Why? Because there’s so much more to the Coast series than motorcycles. There’s the challenges, the journey, geography, history and people. You get to travel the entire coast of England and Wales with us, see how we did it, share our ups and downs, experience English culture, the history and hear about the people that made Britain ‘Great’!

What’s also good about the coast series is it doesn’t matter when you start watching, it’s like one of those open top bus tours – you can get on at any point and just keep going until you arrive back where you started.

Who are we? We’re a husband & wife living in an unremarkable coastal town in England. We’ve been married 35 years and were brought together by motorcycles. One day, Esther’s Honda Melody broke down and she brought it to Jarrod’s motorcycle shop – the rest (as they say) is history.

One cold February day, we started riding along the seafront and just kept going. We wanted to record the experience to have something to watch in the future – the YouTube channel was an afterthought. Take a look at those first few episodes to see just how novice we were, cobbling together what little phone footage we had to try to make a story. To make up for our amateur recording and shyness we added information in the editing. This set the tone and style of our videos, we hope you like it. We like to think we’ve improved and hopefully you’ll agree, take a look, compare our earlier videos with the later ones and let us know in the comments.

There’s also the filming and production journey. When we started we knew nothing about filming, video and audio production, editing, YouTube and the like. We’ve learnt loads and spent loads in time and money along the way but it’s been almost as enjoyable as the journey itself. You’ll hopefully appreciate how far we’ve come.

But what’s with all those bible verses we hear you say. We know some of you don’t appreciate this aspect, one or two have told us in the comments. That’s fine – it really is. All are equally welcome here, believers and unbelievers. It would be a pity if you enjoyed everything else but just stopped watching because of the Christian references but we completely accept you’re free to do as you please.Our faith has prompted us to include a bible verse in our videos and sometimes a Christian perspective on the things we talk about. The channel is not about Christianity but our faith cannot be separated from it. We hope and pray that it will make you think, inquire and even bring you into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.