Plymouth - Smeaton’s Tower
Created | Updated Apr 12, 2002
Smeaton’s Tower (situated upon the Plymouth Hoe) is a lighthouse unlike any other.
For a starter, it doesn’t work. For a main course, it’s actually inland (not much, but
there is enough land between it and the ocean for it to be considered ‘inland’ and not
‘inwater’). For a particularly scrumptious dessert, it’s visited by thousands of tourists
every year. And for a couple of coffees and an After-Eight Mint, it was sliced in half
many years ago.
The tower itself was bisected and moved to its current residence to stand as a testament
to it’s creator, Mr, um, Smeaton (though it could well have been moved as a lark by
some of Smeaton’s drinking mates). The remaining stump is still visible on a clear day,
standing in the shadow of its whole, taller and infinitely smugger replacement.
As to the removed portion of the lighthouse (the top half, in case you were wondering),
it has become a tourist attraction and a place to visit on field trips from the local
schools. Since these trips began, it soon became obvious that the tower now had a new
purpose, that being for teachers to take their pupils to the top of the lighthouse and to
make them stare at the ground until a goodly sense of vertigo is permanently installed
in them.
For a starter, it doesn’t work. For a main course, it’s actually inland (not much, but
there is enough land between it and the ocean for it to be considered ‘inland’ and not
‘inwater’). For a particularly scrumptious dessert, it’s visited by thousands of tourists
every year. And for a couple of coffees and an After-Eight Mint, it was sliced in half
many years ago.
The tower itself was bisected and moved to its current residence to stand as a testament
to it’s creator, Mr, um, Smeaton (though it could well have been moved as a lark by
some of Smeaton’s drinking mates). The remaining stump is still visible on a clear day,
standing in the shadow of its whole, taller and infinitely smugger replacement.
As to the removed portion of the lighthouse (the top half, in case you were wondering),
it has become a tourist attraction and a place to visit on field trips from the local
schools. Since these trips began, it soon became obvious that the tower now had a new
purpose, that being for teachers to take their pupils to the top of the lighthouse and to
make them stare at the ground until a goodly sense of vertigo is permanently installed
in them.
