St Mary’s Light on Penbal Crag
From mountain ridge to forest cave
The scattered flowers of summer smile,
But dark and heavy rolls the wave
That sweeps round Tynemouth’s cloistered pile.
And high above the restless surge
A lady lists its deepening roar,
She marks their course the billows urge,
And ceaseless lash with foam the shore.
She gazes from her lattice high,
When morning springs from ocean’s bed;
The passing skiff attracts her eye,
On which day’s latest beams are shed.
But ah! those eyes they beam not bright,
That throbbing heart is never gay;
Why sleepless doth she pass the night,
Why lone and mournful spend the day?
At eve her kindled taper gleams
O’er wave and head-land bright and far;
The watchful pilot often deems
Its flame a little twinkling star.
From the tale, ‘The Tynemouth Nun’ by Robert White (1829).
Robert White was an antiquary and poet from Yetholm.
There has probably been a beacon on the headland since at least Early Medieval times. It was known as Mary’s Light after the chapel at the Priory. Stella Maris, Mary’s Star, is the guiding light for seafarers.
The first lighthouse was built by Edward Villiers in the 1660s: https://penbal.uk/the-destruction-corruption-and-intrigues-of-colonel-villiers/
It was rebuilt in the 18th century, then in the 19th century the North Pier made the lighthouse redundant, so in 1898 it was pulled down, once the gleaming state-of-the-art lighthouse on Bates Island was complete.
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
