Happisburgh Lighthouse in Happisburgh on the North Norfolk coast is the only independently operated lighthouse in Great Britain. It is also the oldest working lighthouse in East Anglia. History The building was constructed in 1790 as one of a pair of lights ("High Lighthouse" and "Low Lighthouse") and worked with the Newarp Lightvessel to guide mariners around the southern edge of the offshore Haisborough Sands. The light came from rows of oil lamps placed in front of polished reflectors. In 1868 the lantern stage (the top-most part of the tower) was replaced with the diagonally-framed glass structure seen today (which was a new innovation at the time) and following this improvement the reflectors were replaced in each lighthouse by a large (first-order) catadioptric lens designed by Chance Brothers at Smethwick near Birmingham. In 1871 Happisburgh's lighthouses were used for a series of trials comparing a Douglass 4-wick oil light (displayed from the low lighthouse) with a Wigham 108-jet gas light (displayed from the high lighthouse) both using the same optics; the experiments (which tested rival claims made by the principal advocates of these forms of illumination, James Nicholas Douglass and John Richardson Wigham respectively) were not conclusive and further trials later took place at South Foreland. In order to provide a supply of coal gas for the lamp, a small gas works was established alongside the high lighthouse; the gas was manufactured using cannel coal and stored in a pair of gas holders situated behind the lighthouse. In 1872, the trial having concluded, it was decided to retain gas as the illuminant for the high lighthouse. Beyond Happisburgh, however, Trinity House did not adopt gas as an illuminant for its lighthouses. The low light was decommissioned and demolished in 1884 before it could be lost due to coastal erosion; its lantern and lens were reused at Southwold lighthouse. The demolition of the low light led to the High Light being repainted with red bands, so as to differentiate it more clearly from the lighthouse at Winterton; at the same time it was also provided with an occulting mechanism to differentiate the light itself. The light source was changed to paraffin in 1904, and then to an unwatched acetylene system in 1929; this meant that there was no further need for keepers to be permanently accommodated on site, and the keepers' cottages were then sold. In 1947 the light was electrified