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 ]
