Trinity House: five centuries of making shipping safe
Founded by Henry VIII, it is responsible for lightships, buoys, communications and pilotage and has a charity for the welfare of seafarers.
The authority’s corporate HQ has been on Tower Hill, close to the once bustling Port of London, since the late 18th century. This easy to miss building overlooking the Tower of London is home to an organisation with huge significance in the maritime history of a seafaring nation.
Trinity House is the lighthouse authority for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. It also overseas lightvessels, buoys, communications services and pilotage for ships in the North Sea. In addition it has a charity whose aims are the welfare of retired seafarers, education and safety at sea. Its operational hub is in Harwich.
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For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.
On a recent tour of Trinity House, I discovered much about the history of the organisation and saw many of its historic artefacts, artworks, furnishings and instruments.
In March 1513 a group of mariners petitioned Henry VIII to establish a body to regulate pilotage services (guiding ships into harbours, through river mouths and other congested or dangerous waterways) on the River Thames. They were concerned that unqualified pilots were a risk to vessels navigating the river between the North Sea and London. Worse, they feared that foreign pilots could use their knowledge to guide invasion fleets.
In May 1514 the king granted a Royal Charter to "The Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St Clement in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the County of Kent."
Not the most snappy title for the organisation. Fortunately, it is now officially “The Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond”, a title usually abbreviated to Trinity House.
The purposes of the new Corporation included "to improve the art and science of mariners; to examine into the qualifications, and regulate... those who... conduct[…] ships; to preserve good order”, and “the conservation, good estate, wholesome government, maintenance and increase of navigation and sea-faring men; and to relieve decayed seamen and their relatives."
This latter phrase established Trinity House’s charitable wing, which today makes donations of £5 million annually for the welfare of seafarers from the merchant navy, a cadet scheme and other related causes.
The Corporation was granted a coat of arms by the College of Arms in 1573, as recorded in a page that has been copied and displayed on a wall in Trinity House.
Trinity House moved from Deptford to Ratcliffe (between Limehouse and Shadwell) in 1618 and moved to a house in Water Lane, next to Custom House in the City of London, in 1660. This house was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and again after a fire in 1715.
Towards the end of the 18th century Trinity House moved to its current location on Tower Hill, where a new house was built to designs by Samuel Wyatt, City Surveyor, in 1794-96.
In the landing at the top of the stairs in Trinity House (the landing is known as the Quarter Deck) there is a large painting. It shows Wyatt gaining approval for his plans from the Elder Brethren (the governing body of Trinity House) in 1794. The artist, Gainsborough Dupont, was a nephew and pupil of the great 18th century painter Thomas Gainsborough.
Dupont is believed to have used a group of ballast heavers to model for this, then painting in the heads of the Elder Brethren at later dates when they were available, which explains their toned legs.
The figure at the right hand end of the scene, Captain Joseph Huddart, was originally left out as he was abroad at the time of the painting. He insisted on being included and so an additional panel had to be sewn onto the work. It is said that the annoyed artist portrayed Huddart without a wig to get his own back.
Wyatt’s Trinity House was gutted by an aerial bombing raid in the Blitz on 29 December 1940, when an incendiary bomb lodged in the roof of the stairwell.
The reconstruction was led by architect Albert Richardson, a lover of 18th century design (who also designed the Financial Times building in the City), and the house reopened in 1953.
Richardson used photographs of the interior that had appeared in Country Life magazine in 1919 to guide his close reproduction. The stone façade overlooking Trinity Square Gardens is original. A new east wing, with brickwork on the upper level, was added to house a library and other rooms.
During the war a number of large paintings were sent for safekeeping to Bayham Abbey in Kent, while smaller paintings were stored in a dungeon at the nearby Tower of London.
After a year in the dungeon some of the more valuable old paintings were showing signs of damp and it was agreed to move them to Doxford Hall, the home of Lord Runciman in Northumberland. They were brought back from the Tower to Trinity House on 28 December 1940 before their journey north, planned for 30 December.
Sadly, the incendiary bomb attack on 29 December that gutted the building also destroyed many of these paintings as well as a number of models of ships.
Nevertheless, Trinity House today contains a wide range of fascinating and beautiful paintings, sculptures, models, instruments, clocks, stained glass and silver plate.
Here is a selection of them.
The entrance hall includes a magnificent model, made in 1952, of a 17th century warship called Prince Royal. James I/VI commissioned the original vessel for his son Prince Henry. It was built in 1610 at Woolwich (another Royal Dockyard founded by Henry VIII).
There are models of two Trinity House Vessels, modern ships whose duties include lighthouse maintenance, laying buoys and clearing channels. There are also models of lightvessels, including the first such ship, Royal Sovereign, built in the late 19th century.
Trinity House operates nine lightships today (compared with 90 at one point). It has 66 lighthouses and around 450 buoys.
In a corner of the entrance hall is a Chinese gong, which were sounded on lightvessels in stormy/foggy conditions before foghorns came into use.
The hall also contains historical clocks that were used to control the flow of gas to turn the lighthouse beam on and off (like presetting your gas boiler).
Either side of the staircase are two globes made in 1824 by the cartographer John Cary. To the left is a celestial globe, while the other is Cary’s New Terrestrial Globe. This illustrates the voyages and discoveries of three 18th century explorers: the Royal Navy’s Captains Cook and Vancouver and the French Navy’s comte de Lapérouse.
Behind the celestial globe is a statue of Captain Robert Sandes, who bequeathed a 500 acre Lincolnshire farm to Trinity House in 1721. On the other side of the stairs is a stature of Captain Richard Maples, who left money for a new hall and almshouses in Deptford in 1680, (where the statue originally stood in 1681).
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Captain Robert Sandes, Trinity House staircase, Captain Richard Maples
The curved stairwell wall displays two paintings by Gainsborough Dupont, one of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Howe and the other of former Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (Master of Trinity House 1790-1806), either side of a portrait of Captain Woolmore (Deputy Master 1825-1834) by Sir Martin Archer (a portrait specialist who was President of the Royal Academy 1830-1850).
Below the large Dupont painting at the top of the stairs hangs the ship’s bell from the Royal Yacht Britannia, decommissioned in 1997.
Next to the bell, a painting by Richard Foster depicts Trinity House’s Elder Brethren on the Corporation’s 500th anniversary in 2014. They are dressed in their Trinity House uniforms.
Among the mainly senior Naval Officers in this painting are the Princess Royal, notably the only woman depicted, who has been Master of Trinity House since 2011. Also visibale are her father Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (her predecessor as Master) and former Prime Minister John Major.
The 2014 painting depicts Trinity House’s Court Room, which features a wonderful painted ceiling. This post-war reproduction by Glynn Jones faithfully recalls the original created by John Francis Rigaud in the 1790s. It includes depictions of Neptune at the top of the south wall and Britannia at the top of the north wall.
Whereas Rigaud painted the original in situ, Jones made life easier for himself by painting the replacements on canvas panels that were pasted to the ceiling when completed.
The Court Room also contains a copy of Hans Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII, founder of Trinity House, and a portrait of Elizabeth I, the latter attributed to the circle of Elizabethan court painter George Gower in her lifetime.
Like her father, Elizabeth I is important in the history of Trinity House. She gave it the power to build lighthouses and other seamarks to protect ships and their crews in 1566 and to make buoys in 1594.
She also gave it responsibility for signs at harbour entrances and ballastage rights (a toll paid by ships for taking up ballast materials from a port, which they needed to replace the weight of disembarked cargo).
There are also paintings of George III and Queen Charlotte, both painted by Gainsborough Dupont for the opening of the building in 1796, and of William IV and Queen Adelaide by William Beechey.
William IV was the first Royal to be Master of Trinity House, serving in 1829-30 just before he became king, and this started a sequence that continues today. He introduced trousers, rather than breeches, for the uniform.
Adjacent to the Court Room, the Luncheon Room includes portraits of the Duke of Wellington, Master 1837-1852, and his successor as Master, Prince Albert. Queen Victoria’s consort was the last Master of Trinity House to be elected at the church of St Nicholas in Deptford. Elections now take place in St Olave Hart Street, a short walk from Trinity Square.
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Portraits of the Duke of Wellington and Prince Albert
A mirror above the fireplace in the Luncheon Room is thought to be the only Trinity House mirror to survive World War II. Apparently, the others were broken when the lorry taking them to safe place for storage crashed after the start of the war in 1939.
This room also features paintings of the first two Eddystone lighthouses.
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The first two Eddystone lighthouses
The first, built on a rock off in the English Channel off Plymouth in 1699, was the first open-sea lighthouse in the world. Before it was completed a French privateer captured its designer, Henry Winstanley, and destroyed the partly-built structure. French King Louis XIV ordered Winstanley’s release, declaring "France is at war with England, not with humanity".
During a powerfully destructive cyclone in 1703, Winstanley declared his confidence in his structure. He travelled to the lighthouse to be inside it during "the greatest storm there ever was". Sadly, however, he and his lighthouse disappeared without trace.
The second Eddystone lighthouse was designed by John Rudyard and completed in 1709. It lasted until 1755 when it caught fire and was destroyed.
The 94 year-old lighthouse keeper, Henry Hall, suffered burns from molten lead from the roof that fell on him while trying to fight the fire. He also felt hot lead go down his throat. Hall and his two colleagues were rescued by passing fishermen. After several days of normal eating and drinking, Hall's condition deteriorated and he died 12 days after the fire.
An autopsy recovered a seven ounce piece of solid lead from his stomach. The original lump of lead is kept at the National Museum of Scotland (I am not sure why), but Trinity House has an exact replica.
The Reading Room displays an eclectic assortment of items, many of which have been left by members to the Corporation. Some of these are mentioned below.
Prince Philip’s frock coat uniform, the form of dress worn by the Elder Brethren on formal occasions, including Merchant Navy Day (3 September), is in a glass case.
The clock and barometer from Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic research ship Nimrod are on the wall.
A book containing drawings of the third Eddystone lighthouse, completed in 1759, was laid out on a table during my visit. The third lighthouse was designed by John Smeaton, an influential engineer (who was the first person to call himself a Civil Engineer and, strangely, is name checked in the Kaiser Chiefs’ song I Predict a Riot).
His design was inspired by the trunk of an oak tree, with a heavy base and low centre of gravity. It lasted 123 years, before it was decommissioned in 1882 because of erosion in the rocks. The fourth Eddystone Lighthouse, built in 1882, remains in use today.
There is a painting by Raymond Wilson of Winston Churchill with US President Roosevelt on board HMS Prince of Wales at the Atlantic Conference in August 1941. Churchill is wearing his Trinity House uniform (so as not to upset any of the armed services). He had been appointed to the Elder Brethren in 1913 due to his position as First Lord of the Admiralty. In an unrelated incident, Churchill was once fined one shilling for smoking at Trinity House.
At first sight the Library, in the post-war east wing, does not appear to contain any books. However, they are kept behind doors in the panelling around the walls.
The Library has a number of portraits, including those of Earl Mountbatten, Prince Philip, the Marquis of Milford Haven (father of Earl Mountbatten), Princess Anne and Sir Winston Churchill.
A glass case displays the Corporation’s silver plate, the centrepiece of which is a highly ornate silver wine cooler, topped with a figure of Britannia, presented by William IV in 1831.
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The display case with silver plate
Among the many other silver items are two Loving Cups, made in 1612 and 1627, adorned with pointed steeples.
There is also a silver model of Bishop Rock Lighthouse, often called the King of lighthouses (the real thing stands off Plymouth), and a silver salt in the form of Winstanley’s Eddystone Lighthouse.
The windows on the east of the Library include some fine stained glass, including some taken from the original Hall in Deptford when it was demolished in 1788. They were installed in the Corporation’s almshouses in Mile End and brought to the current building in the 1950s.
There is a series of glass panels showing the names, arms and merchant marks of Masters and Wardens of Trinity House going back to 1570.
Adjacent to the Library is the Pepys Room, a reference to the great diarist Samuel Pepys, who was Master in 1676-77.
Trinity House, partly hidden by trees and often ignored by those visiting the nearby Tower of London, represents more than 500 years of history and is a living embodiment of London’s maritime heritage.
For details of public tours of Trinity House, please go to its website or contact tours@trinityhouse.co.uk
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Golden Hind model, HMS Victory model, Cutty Sark model
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Detail from John Cary’s Celestial Globe and his New Terrestrial Globe, 1824
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.
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