Six of the Best 101

If the Alternative Vote had been in use at the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrats would have won 32 more seats, and a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition would also have had a Commons majority, find the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog.

Mark Pack ponders the perils and pitfalls of allowing, and moderating, online comments.

"Michael Gove is to be commended for publishing the two Serious Case Reviews (SCR) on the tragic events leading up to the death of Peter Connelly (Baby P). Labour always refused to do so – but if that somewhat overused phrase ‘lessons must be learned’ is to mean anything – then publishing SCRs is a real step in the right direction," says Lynne Featherstone.

Virtually Naked discusses Ed Miliband continuing lack of alternative economic policy, as revealed at prime minister's questions today.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Sir Peter Scott's lighthouse near Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire. Now it is for sale, reports Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service.

Crying All the Way to the Chip Shop presents the headstone of Tony Wilson, the Manchester music mogul.

British Pathe film of Peter Scott's lighthouse near Sutton Bridge

Back in the summer I visited Peter Scott's old home in the East lighthouse at the mouth of the River Nene near Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire.

Click on the photograph above and you will go to newsreel footage of Scott, his home and the wildfowl he conserved there.

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.

The River Nene lighthouses, Sutton Bridge

Last week I showed you one of the ornamental lighthouses at the mouth of the River Nene near Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire.

Here is a photograph of the pair of them in the trees on either side of the river. The righthand one is the East lighthouse, Peter Scott's home in the 1930s. It is shown close up in the second photograph.

How we won the Ashes in Sutton Bridge

I left King's Lynn yesterday morning on the bus for Sutton Bridge. I got a shock when I arrived as the town's main hotel, which was apparently still thriving according to numerous websites, and found it was boarded up. I was later told that it had been like that for a year or so.

This turned out not to be a problem as I was able to find accommodation just down the road. The cricket was on in the bar and I was pleased to see that we had already got both Australian openers out.

I headed off to photograph the Crosskeys bridge. This structure, the third bridge on the site, was opened in 1897 and originally carried both road and rail traffic - the railway (the old Midland and Great Northern line, which took generations of holidaymakers to the Norfolk coast) on what is now the westbound carriageway and the road on the eastbound side. The railway closed in 1965 and the bridge is now road only, carrying the modern A17.

The bridge is interesting because it a swing bridge crowned with a control cabin and is still opened several times a week to allow large ships to make their way up the River Nene to Wisbech. It used to open more often, but a port has been developed below the bridge at Sutton Bridge which has taken much of Wisbech's trade.

According to Wikipedia the Crosskeys Bridge was used as a location in the film of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. I shall have to see it now.

Having examined the bridge I set off down the banks of the Nene for the Wash. I had read that about three miles downstream, at what was then the mouth of the river (more land has been reclaimed since then - indeed, you never do quite reach the sea when you try anywhere around the Wash), two ornamental lighthouses had been erected in 1831.

They never served as lighthouses but were used as customs posts. The lighthouse on the east bank was the home of Sir Peter Scott in the 1930s. When I reached them they turned out to resemble nothing so much as a pair of salt and pepper shakers.

The path carries on around the Wash - indeed the Peter Scott Walk will take you down the Great Ouse estuary too and back to the ferry at West Lynn.


I had made a pact with God that I would not look at the test score until I had reached the lighthouses. When I did, I found England had taken five Australian wickets and was reasonably pleased.

After I had walked back into Sutton Bridge I was less pleased to find that there were still only five wickets down. So I bought a beer and sat down to watch, whereupon the last five wickets fell in less than an hour.

Not a bad day, all told.