Today lighthouses are monuments perched on the shore, without the souls that live there. In the past, they welcomed men for maintenance and operation and for shore-based lighthouses, entire families who lived there.
Maryvonne Perrotte is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper at Gatteville-Barfleur. She lived there for 10 years from 1948 to 1958 with her whole family. Through this book, she shares her anecdotes about the life of this lighthouse.
The Gatteville-Barfleur lighthouse has this double name, depending on where you look at it from. For landowners, it is the lighthouse of Gatteville because it is on the commune of the same name. For sailors, the lighthouse is located at the tip of Barfleur, at the end of the Cotentin. It is therefore Barfleur's lighthouse for sailors.
This lighthouse is a "Lighthouse on land", i.e. it can be reached from land without taking the boat. This access allowed the family to live with the lighthouse keeper. Life was therefore less harsh for these men than in isolated lighthouses at sea.
The Gatteville-Barfleur lighthouse is the highest lighthouse on land with a tower that rises to 75 m. In reality, the site is occupied by 2 lighthouses. A first tower was built in 1773. But too low to carry far enough, the construction of the much higher second was decided in 1825. It then served as a semaphore to monitor traffic at sea.
To save construction costs by avoiding scaffolding, the lathe is double. A tubular tower is built in the centre while a second conical tower on the outside covers it. Between the two there is a winding staircase. The hollow tower in the centre, used to hoist the granite blocks. A funny detail is that the lighthouse staircase has 365 steps and 52 windows (as many as days and weeks in a year). It takes 15 minutes for the lighthouse keeper to take over to climb these steps...
This book is full of photographic documents from different periods and illustrated with a few watercolours for colour. We appreciate the details and boxes that clearly show the narrator's experience. A book that lighthouse lovers will devour, the less educated on the estate will appreciate the volume of information.
The Gatteville-Berfleur lighthouse
Maryvonne Perrotte
- OREP Editions
- 26 x 22 cm
- 145 pages
- 25,00 ?
