Gribbin Head Daymarker

This tall square tower stands on Gribbin Head, southwest of Fowey on the south Cornwall coast. To all intents and purposes it looks like a lighthouse, complete with red and white stripes, apart from one fundamental difference – no light!

Instead it is a “daymarker” as opposed to a “nightmarker”. The tower stands 84 feet high (25 metres), and is easily visible to sailors out at sea, but only during daylight hours. It has been in place on the headland since 1832.

So why was it built?

The problem was that Gribbin Head (known to locals as “The Gribbin” looks very similar from out at sea to St Anthony Head, which is a few miles to the west, on the eastern side of Falmouth Bay. Sailors heading for Falmouth Harbour would naturally steer the to west of St Anthony Head, but if they made the mistake of confusing the two headlands, they would instead sail blindy into the shallow water of St Austell Bay to the west of Gribbin Head and be wrecked.

This mistake was only possible in daylight, so a daymarker was what was needed to warn them of the danger.