South Foreland Lighthouse

Victorian clifftop lighthouse where Marconi made the first international radio transmission

South Foreland Lighthouse stands on the chalk headland east of Dover, reached by a brisk clifftop walk from the National Trust visitor centre at the White Cliffs. The Victorian lighthouse was built in 1843 to warn ships away from the Goodwin Sands, a notorious shallow where hundreds of vessels have foundered over the centuries.

The lighthouse holds a significant place in the history of communications: Guglielmo Marconi used it in 1899 for the first wireless message sent across the Channel. The National Trust opens the lighthouse to visitors at weekends and during school holidays, with guided tours up the tower. The clifftop walk from the visitor centre is around 4 km and offers some of the finest views along the Kent coast.

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A story
On 27 March 1899, Guglielmo Marconi stood in this lighthouse and sent the first international radio transmission across the Channel to Wimereux in France — a distance of 50 km. Two years earlier, he had also used the lighthouse to prove that electricity could power a lighthouse signal, making it the first electrically lit lighthouse in England.