Show on mapChallenging my readers has already worked in the past, so what do you make of this ?
It stands isolated on its own jetty with a ladder from the base, one to its door and one onto the top. It is adjacent to a jetty and the pillbox.
The only suggestion i’ve seen so far is some sort of decompression tank although the apparently lack of windows would have made it pretty awful to spend any time in.
UPDATE : Following Daves suggestion I checked the old maps, which I didn’t do in the first place for some reason. They have it labelled as “Seaton Snook Wharf Light (Double Flashing Red)” Presumably the actual light was on top and had been removed and inside I would guess was something electrical ?
UPDATE 2 : Thanks to Mike : The ‘tank’ once had a lantern fixed to the top. This was fuelled by bottled gas.
The gas cylinders were stored inside the tank and changed when necessary by the buoy attendant. During the 1960s this was James (Little Jimmy) Robson of Seaton Carew.
Channel Marker and light of some kind?
It looks to be made from either an old Pressure Vessel or an old navigation Buey
Wonder if it marked on a large scale OS map ? They do give name tags to some objects like channel lights and suchlike
Map from 1916 shows nothing on the ‘spit’ but there is a schoolroom, mission and rows of houses named ‘Snook Cottages’ and a railway going past to a Zink Works in the area where there is now a modern industrial unit to the north.
Obviously the Power Station isn’t there, it is just marked as an area of Mud next to the old Greys Shipyard that is now Able.
I assume any military installations relating to WW1 would be built after the map was drawn or not included on the map.
1939 map shows the Jetty and Slipway and has ‘our’ structure marked as
‘Seaton Snook Wharfe Light (Double Flashing Red)’
It is marked as a small square in the exact position of our structure.
It is still marked as a light on all maps up until 1981
Cottages are still there on the 1953 map but they are gone from the 1968
it certainly has the appearance of a pressure vesel.could the light have been run on paraffin or gas? perhaps carbide.it would have been expensive to run mains electricity or town gas out to it. does the door look as if it could have provided a gas tight seal.? Once more Chris has come up with a mystery!
Sorry, Posted mine before I noticed the update.
I don’t think the vessel was ever pressurised. it looks like the top of a lit Navigation buoy. The big ‘seagoing’ channel markers etc have a big floatation buoy with an upperworks that contains any lighting equipment or foghorns etc. It would make sense that when putting up a channel light they would use equipment that was already to hand and in use. I would guess it contained maybe gas equipment and later electrical switching.
The ‘tank’ once had a lantern fixed to the top. This was fuelled by bottled gas.
The gas cylinders were stored inside the tank and changed when necessary by the buoy attendant. During the 1960s this was James (Little Jimmy) Robson of Seaton Carew.
where they making moonshine down there looks like a good still fer cookin!