A new Channel 5 series exploring the history of British lighthouses and featuring an episode on the Northumberland Coast begins this Friday.
Lighthouses: Building the Impossible is a three part journey along Britain's beautiful but treacherous coastline, with presenter Rob Bell attempting to uncover the secrets of one of Britain's most heroic feats of engineering - the rock lighthouse. Each episode is led by an iconic hard-to-reach lighthouse that reveals tales of catastrophic shipwrecks, dramatic rescues, and incredible feats of endurance and survival - with the Northumberland episode centred around the Longstone lighthouse on the Farne Islands.
Longstone, which is 5.5 miles off the coast from Seahouses, is the lighthouse from which Grace Darling carried out her famous rescue in 1838 from the wrecked steam ship 'Forfarshire' and became a national heroine. Presenter Bell learns more about how the rescue which made Grace a national celebrity could so easily have become an act of tragic self-sacrifice, and feels the weight of the actual boat that she took on.
