Legend
The Cotton Lighthouse
Its feet rest on a wreck.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- A tall white brick tower on coastal grassland
- Legend from
- Leasowe tradition
- Best time
- Any
- Tone
- Curious
Beneath the oldest brick lighthouse in Britain, they say, lie bales of cotton from a wrecked ship.
Leasowe Lighthouse, built in 1763 by Liverpool Corporation, is described as the oldest brick-built lighthouse in Britain. It was one of four lights on the North Wirral shore that guided ships past the dangerous sandbanks. Local tradition says its foundations were laid on bales of cotton salvaged from a nearby shipwreck to steady the ground. The Friends of Leasowe Lighthouse say this has never been proved. Its twin, the lower light on the shore, was washed away in a storm in 1770. Mrs Mary Williams, one of the few women keepers of her day, kept the light until it was put out for the last time in 1908.