Peter Scott's lighthouse at Sutton Bridge

Elspeth Huxley's biography of Peter Scott has some information about his lighthouse near Sutton Bridge:

For some time he had had his eye on twin lighthouses standing on each bank of the River Nene where it enters the Wash. They had been designed by John Pennie [sic. it was Rennie], architect of Waterloo Bridge, and built between 1829 and 1834 to commemorate the draining of the Great Fens, but the lamps had never been lit to warn ships at sea.

A customs officer from Sutton Bridge, three miles upstream, arrived twice daily half an hour before high tide to hail through a megaphone any ship that might be entering of leaving the river, and left half an hour after that turn of the tide.

One of those lighthouses, on the eastern bank, was unoccupied and in reasonably good repair. In the summer of 1933 Peter secured a lease from the Nene Catchment Board for a rent of £5 a year. He arranged for a few repairs and moved in.

Later she writes:

The lighthouse had, and has, four storeys, the bottom one sixteen feet in diameter, the top one only just big enough to take a divan bed. A steep curved staircase connects the ground floor with the room above, which was fitted with beds that could he hauled up to the ceiling to allow the space to be used to sit in. Above that Peter's bedroom could be reached by a ladder, it pale green wall decorated by a frieze of white ducks. Above that was an eyrie with an eagle's view over the watery landscape. Peter loved his lighthouse dearly.