The Roman Lighthouse Reused as an Anglo-Saxon Church Bell Tower

This is a Roman lighthouse built around 130 AD making it over 1800 years old. Nowadays it stands just under 16 meters tall but in Roman times it would have been 24 meters tall, that's 80 foot. This is the only Roman lighthouse surviving in Britain today and there were just three of these Roman lighthouses that survive in the entirety of the Roman Empire. The story of why this particular lighthouse survives is really interesting but first let's talk a bit about why here, why in Dover. When the Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD they brought with them 40,000 soldiers. They came into Richborough which at first was the most important port of Britain. As time went on though Dover became more and more significant with the establishment of the British fleet known as the Classis Britannica. This protected trade going from Britain to France, things like metal, pelts, hides, that kind of thing. But ancient sea travel was treacherous especially in the English Channel. Lighthouses like this one here were a vital piece of equipment for the Roman Navy. At night time the top of the light tower would have a brassiere in it which would of course act as a beacon. There would have been another lighthouse on the other side of the Dower Valley. This enabled ships to come into the Dower River and offload in Dover. In Dover there was also a Roman fort which of course protected the important sea trade from any land invasion. At its shortest point the English Channel is just 21 miles wide and on the other side of it is France. This Roman lighthouse, the Pharos, along with the other one on the other side of the Dower Valley was connected with a third Roman lighthouse at Boulogne which was the other base for the Classis Britannica. It's important to remember that although some civilian sailors and traders definitely used these lighthouses it was not for them. It was for this British fleet which protected Roman trade going from Britannia to Gaul. This fleet would have also been responsible for transporting any soldiers or any other kind of military activity that the Roman emperors commanded. When this lighthouse was built in about 130 AD Dover Castle that you can see behind me wasn't built nor was this magnificent Anglo-Saxon church. It is however on a very prominent hill and the Iron Age people before the Romans came here noted of its defensive capabilities as well and built a hill fort where I'm standing. The Romans noticed this and decided to use this opportunity to build a lighthouse here. They used local flint, brick and ragstone to construct this magnificent building in different courses. There are four Roman courses and the top one is much later. This church behind me dates to about 1000 AD. If you look very closely you can see some Roman building materials particularly the red bricks used in construction of this Anglo-Saxon church. We discussed earlier that this would have originally been 24 meters tall. It's just under half of that height now at just under 16 meters. All of that building material would have either been lost or reused to build this magnificent church. Now if you look very closely you can see the top part of the Roman lighthouse looks a bit more modern than the bottom. That's because this was built in the early 1400s when the Roman lighthouse was converted into a belfry for this church. Around about this time in England it was becoming more and more common to have a bell tower and the people of this church thought what better building to reuse than this Roman lighthouse. Although the Romans did leave Britain in about 410 AD it's thought that this lighthouse was still used as a lighthouse for many centuries afterwards. There's a reference in the 12th century to a lighthouse keeper in Dover where this lighthouse is suggesting that it was still used as a lighthouse many many centuries after the Roman empire had fallen in the west. In the 1580s a roof was added to the Roman faroes making it into a gunpowder magazine, a storage facility. The other lighthouse on the other side of the valley has completely been destroyed because it wasn't reused. The only reason this lighthouse that you see behind me survived was because it was reused as the belfry for this Anglo-Saxon church so it's just as well they did decide to modify it and reuse it.