Bexhill Maritime achieved its first major objective on Wednesday 6 December 2023 by taking delivery of
the iconic tower.
It had been sitting on the quayside at Shoreham port since October. On Tuesday 5 December it was
lifted onto a trailer by Coussens Cranes of Bexhill and gently laid on its side.
The following day it was transported by K Drury and Sons of Hurst Green to its new temporary home at
Ibstock in Turkey Road.
It will remain there in secure storage and under wraps until it can be placed in position on East Parade
where it will form the focus of the new maritime centre.
the iconic tower.
It had been sitting on the quayside at Shoreham port since October. On Tuesday 5 December it was
lifted onto a trailer by Coussens Cranes of Bexhill and gently laid on its side.
The following day it was transported by K Drury and Sons of Hurst Green to its new temporary home at
Ibstock in Turkey Road.
It will remain there in secure storage and under wraps until it can be placed in position on East Parade
where it will form the focus of the new maritime centre.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [no audio]
00:06 So just a little bit about the background.
00:08 And the Lantern Tower and the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse
00:13 was sitting out at sea.
00:15 In about 2018 I was aware that the end of its 50-year lifespan was due
00:23 and I thought, hmm, it's so sad to think that it's going to be dismantled and disposed of.
00:31 It's a little bit of iconic history.
00:36 So I wrote Trinity House as an individual
00:40 and put forward the idea of rescuing the Lantern Tower section of the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse
00:46 to which they responded and it was favourable.
00:51 They were interested in the idea.
00:53 So it was then down to me to work out some kind of a strategy for executing that.
01:00 I then, at that time I was the founder and chairman and trustee of a charity called Bexhill Heritage
01:11 and I offered it to Bexhill Heritage as a project.
01:15 So that was put to the members and everybody thought, yeah, great idea.
01:20 So then we formed a Lantern Tower Working Group, which existed for about a year
01:30 and we worked out some strategy to bring it ashore.
01:35 And then, unbelievably, the trustees of Bexhill Heritage voted the project down.
01:43 So it came back to me as an individual to find another way.
01:49 And that's the point where I decided, OK, let's set up another charity,
01:54 but a dedicated one really, to a maritime centre.
01:58 And the Lantern Tower that you see behind me would be the iconic centrepiece of the Maritime Centre.
02:08 So in 2019/20 I think it was, I started to form Bexhill Maritime.
02:18 Found some wonderful trustees and committee members, a lot of expertise, local,
02:25 and formed a constitution and purposes and went back to Trinity House and said,
02:35 right, here we are, you know, it's a legitimate charity.
02:39 That took a year, by the way, to become a registered charity.
02:44 And, yeah, the project was obviously transferred over to Bexhill Maritime.
02:51 So that brings us to the point of extraction, which happened in 2023 in September,
03:00 when the contractors suddenly turned up at sea with a huge rig called Gulliver, a barge,
03:11 to dismantle it and take it away.
03:14 Here we are now with the Lantern Tower. So how did it get here from out at sea?
03:21 As Raymond has explained, there was a great gulliver, the great barge,
03:27 to actually take it off the actual light ship itself.
03:32 It was taken to Shoreham and it was there until the beginning of December.
03:40 And then we got some contractors, which were organised by Trinity House,
03:47 to actually get the lighthouse itself here. And here is Ipstok.
03:55 So at the beginning of December, the contractors, the demolition contractors were Herbosh Kier.
04:04 The transporting was done by Cousins Cranes, who actually had to take the tower,
04:13 tip it on its side so it would fit on the trailer.
04:17 And at the beginning of December they moved it by road, rather quickly actually,
04:22 for a big heavy load like this, and they brought it here to Ipstok in Bexhill.
04:29 And Ipstok is a brick company and they've agreed very kindly to store it for us
04:37 until we're ready to put it in its final position,
04:41 which will be on the seafront at the end of the Maritime Centre.
04:47 So we are very lucky to have various sponsors to help us with this,
04:55 notably Ipstok, who are storing it for free for us.
04:59 We have other contractors over there helping fund all this.
05:06 So the tower you see at the moment, it will obviously need some work doing on it.
05:11 It's been out at sea for 53 years.
05:16 But it will end up on the seafront at the bottom of Galley Hill with the Maritime Centre.
05:23 And this will be on the western end of the Maritime Centre,
05:25 so it will be able to be seen along the promenade as a landmark
05:29 and the focal point for the actual Maritime Centre itself.
05:33 So we ought to say it's a Maritime Centre that we're building,
05:36 so it's all about local ecology, the local environment, climate change.
05:42 That will all be included in the building itself.
05:45 There will be an exhibition area, there will be a meeting room,
05:50 there will be a cafe, all part of the complex.
05:54 And the symbol of it will be this lantern tower.
05:59 So when are we talking about?
06:02 Well, it's one of those things at the moment because it's the next stage of the plans.
06:06 We can't give any definite date yet.
06:10 We are now working on the pre-planning application for the actual building itself.
06:16 That needs to be done first.
06:19 We're then working already on the big funding for it,
06:22 because it's going to cost a fair amount of money to do it.
06:26 Once the plans have been passed and the funding is in place,
06:30 we will then be in a position to give a more accurate idea
06:35 of when the thing will actually start being built.
06:38 Logically, we're talking, we should think, two to three years
06:42 before the thing will actually be open, the floor of the centre will actually be open.
06:46 One interesting thing that happened was a crisis situation, actually.
06:51 And in September-ish, I think it was,
06:56 all of a sudden this huge barge arrived, Gulliver,
07:02 and they started to dismantle.
07:07 The challenge was that we had been told that it would come into shore and docks
07:15 for about three weeks, where the asbestos would be removed,
07:20 because that was one of the conditions that I was insistent on,
07:24 that it was certificated as asbestos-free.
07:28 And then it would come over to Bexhill.
07:31 But the problem was, we didn't have anywhere to store it at that time,
07:35 so we had a crisis situation whereby we were told it was coming in three weeks,
07:41 and we had nowhere to put it.
07:45 So we went through 15 different sites, inspecting them and seeing if they were appropriate.
07:54 Each site had a problem.
07:56 All sorts of different challenges, overhead cables, wrong soil, all sorts of things,
08:04 lack of security.
08:06 And in the end, we ran out of sites.
08:09 And by chance, one of our committee members popped into Ipstock Bricks here
08:17 and asked them a silly question, whether they wouldn't mind if we stored a lighthouse on their premises,
08:24 to which they said yes, that would be fine.
08:28 So there was a little time of setting up a contract, and here it is.
08:35 So a little story there. It was a very difficult situation.
08:39 We got down to a fine wire, really.
08:43 It was like one day, I think, or two days before we ran out of options.
08:49 So, lucky break.
08:51 [ Silence ]