The Tennyson Beacon, Isle of Wight
The chalk cliffs of the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight reach their highest point on what is now known as Tennyson Down, but was previously known as High Down - 147 metres above the waters of the English Channel.
After Tennyson's death in 1892 a local committee was formed to decide on an appropriate memorial to the poet who had made the island his home for 40 years.
The memorial - an Iona cross of Cornish granite - was almost certainly designed by Frank Loughborough Pearson, R.A., son of the well-known architect John Loughborough Pearson.
The site already had a beacon, a tarred wooden structure erected by Trinity House in 1893 and known as Nodes Beacon. Trinity House had to be approached for agreement to build a more permanent structure, and change the name to Tennyson Beacon.
As Douglas Freshfield, a Freshwater member of the committee, wrote to The Times:
The beacon cross should form a conspicuous and fitting memorial to one of England's greatest poets.
The beacon is 32 feet high and the cross itself is 24 feet high.
In 1895 the Board of Trade and Trinity House agreed to accept the memorial, that it should be known as 'The Tennyson Beacon' and that they would maintain it in future.
The cost of the memorial was estimated at £1,000 raised through subscription. The American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes formed a committee and raised £200 towards the cost.
By 1897 it had been completed and at 3pm on Friday 6th August the Archbishop of Canterbury performed the dedication ceremony. It was - intentionally - the 88th anniversary of the poet's birth.
The weather, as in this photograph - was glorious with sun and a cooling breeze.
The inscription reads:
In memory of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, this cross is raised as a beacon to sailors, by the people of Freshwater, and other friends in Europe and America.
I feel quite sure, said the second Lord Tennyson, after the dedication, that it is the memorial my father would have liked the best.
That is the positive side of the event. There was another, however, recorded in the pages of The Times a few days later:
that ill-organised, flat affair the other day, the unveiling of the Tennyson Beacon.
Whatever happened on that day, the cross stands almost unaffected by over one hundred years exposure to wind and weather.
The Tennyson Beacon, Isle of Wight
The chalk cliffs of the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight reach their highest point on what is now known as Tennyson Down, but was previously known as High Down - 147 metres above the waters of the English Channel.
After Tennyson's death in 1892 a local committee was formed to decide on an appropriate memorial to the poet who had made the island his home for 40 years.
The memorial - an Iona cross of Cornish granite - was almost certainly designed by Frank Loughborough Pearson, R.A., son of the well-known architect John Loughborough Pearson.
The site already had a beacon, a tarred wooden structure erected by Trinity House in 1893 and known as Nodes Beacon. Trinity House had to be approached for agreement to build a more permanent structure, and change the name to Tennyson Beacon.
As Douglas Freshfield, a Freshwater member of the committee, wrote to The Times:
The beacon cross should form a conspicuous and fitting memorial to one of England's greatest poets.
The beacon is 32 feet high and the cross itself is 24 feet high.
In 1895 the Board of Trade and Trinity House agreed to accept the memorial, that it should be known as 'The Tennyson Beacon' and that they would maintain it in future.
The cost of the memorial was estimated at £1,000 raised through subscription. The American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes formed a committee and raised £200 towards the cost.
By 1897 it had been completed and at 3pm on Friday 6th August the Archbishop of Canterbury performed the dedication ceremony. It was - intentionally - the 88th anniversary of the poet's birth.
The weather, as in this photograph - was glorious with sun and a cooling breeze.
The inscription reads:
In memory of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, this cross is raised as a beacon to sailors, by the people of Freshwater, and other friends in Europe and America.
I feel quite sure, said the second Lord Tennyson, after the dedication, that it is the memorial my father would have liked the best.
That is the positive side of the event. There was another, however, recorded in the pages of The Times a few days later:
that ill-organised, flat affair the other day, the unveiling of the Tennyson Beacon.
Whatever happened on that day, the cross stands almost unaffected by over one hundred years exposure to wind and weather.