Seashaken Houses

A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet

By: Tom Nancollas

Narrated by: David Monteath

Lighthouses are striking totems of our relationship to the sea. For many, they encapsulate a romantic vision of solitary homes amongst the waves, but their original purpose is much more utilitarian than that. Still today we depend upon their guiding lights for the safe passage of ships. Nowhere is this truer than in the rock lighthouses of Great Britain and Ireland, a ring of 19 towers built between 1811-1905, so called because they were constructed on desolate rock formations in the middle of the sea, and made of granite to withstand the power of its waves.

Seashaken Houses is a lyrical exploration of these singular towers, the people who risked their lives building and rebuilding them, those that inhabited their circular rooms, and the ways in which we value emblems of our history in a changing world.

©2018 Tom Nancollas (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Part travelogue part architecture part history

I enjoyed this. It is a little bit of history, a little bit of travel and a little bit of architecture. But I think I was expecting more. More about the details of building these lighthouse, for instance. There is some info on building techniques here, but maybe not the level of detail I was expecting. I think i was also expecting more about shipwrecks in relation to lighthouses. A few shipwrecks are mentioned, but never in any real depth. And I would have been interested in learning more about the lives of the lighthouse keepers. Again, there is some info on this, but less than I had hoped. The real focus is on how the lighthouses are designed, inside and out. For those of us who will never set foot in a lighthouse, it was an enlightening trip, if not quite a grand adventure.