Coquet Island
| Coquet Island | |
 Coquet Island from the sea | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Location: | 55°20’6"N, 1°32’20"W |
| Grid reference: | NU293046 |
| Area: | 15 acres |
| Data | |
| Population: | Uninhabited |
Coquet Island is a small island in the North Sea of about 15 acres, lying less than a mile off Amble on the Northumberland coast.
Bird reserve
The island is owned by the Duke of Northumberland. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds manage the island as a bird reserve, for its important seabird colonies.
The most numerous species is the puffin, with over 18,000 pairs nesting in 2002, but the island is most important for the largest colony of the endangered roseate tern in Britain, which, thanks to conservation measures including the provision of nestboxes to protect the nests from gulls and bad weather, has risen to 92 pairs in 2005. Other nesting birds include sandwich tern, common tern, Arctic tern, black-legged kittiwake, fulmar, three gull species, and eider duck.
The foreshore of the island has a colony of grey seals.
The island is uninhabited in winter, but seasonal wardens are present throughout the summer to protect the nesting birds. Landing on Coquet Island for the general public is prohibited, but local boating companies from Amble sail close up to the island in good weather throughout the summer, allowing visitors to get good views of the puffins (in season; they are at sea from July), roseate terns and seals.
Coquet Lighthouse
Coquet Island also holds the remaining structure of a medieval monastery on the south western shore, which was largely incorporated into the 19th-century lighthouse and lighthouse keepers' cottages. Coquet Lighthouse was built by Trinity House in 1841 at a cost of £3,268.
James Walker designed the lighthouse, which is a white square tower of sandstone, with walls more than three feet thick, surrounded by a turreted parapet. The first keeper at Coquet Lighthouse was William Darling, the elder brother of Grace Darling, the tragic local heroine of the lifeboat.
The lighthouse is now automatic with no resident keeper.[1]
Outside links
- Tide times for Coquet Island (BBC)
- Tide times (Easytide)
- History of Coquet Island (taken from "A History of Northumberland", volume V, by John Crawford Hodgson, 1899)]
References
- ↑ "Coquet Lighthouse". trinintyhouse.co.uk. Trinity House. http://www.trinityhouse.co.uk/lighthouses/lighthouse_list/coquet.html. Retrieved 29 October 2013.