The artist aiming to recreate every lighthouse in Britain - including all the Yorkshire ones

“As kids we used to cycle down there because it was a lovely part of the beach, and when the lights came on in the evening we knew it was time to go home. So they were very much a part of my growing up.” Even so, it wasn’t until decades later, when a hankering for the salty sea air brought him back to the coast, that they once again became a focal point in his life. Roger started out as a storyboard artist for advertising and films before he began making old railway-style posters that echoed those from the 1930s and 40s.

In 2017, he began illustrating the lighthouses around Ireland’s south coast. This quickly grew into a collection that culminated in an award-winning book, Lighthouses of Ireland. Then, during a holiday in Cornwall, he started drawing studies of harbours and lights on the Cornish and Devon coasts and the idea of a new project, the Lighthouses of Britain, started. “I got out a map and started looking how many lighthouses there are, and I thought ‘you know what, I could do the whole lot.’”

His collection of illustrations, based on his drawings and sketches, now runs to over 350 lighthouses, as well as more than 100 smaller lights which provide navigation to our estuaries, harbour approaches and rivers. And it’s still a work in progress. Prints of his illustrations are available to buy with a new book featuring some of his prints, and their stories, due out next year.

Over the past five years, he has worked his way around the British coastline. “The great thing about it is you go off to areas you wouldn’t normally visit and they’re always in spectacular spots. That’s what I love about them,” he says.

“It’s been a fascinating adventure and Yorkshire’s a perfect example, because no two lighthouses look the same. You’ve got ones that look like Daleks on stilts staring out to sea and you’ve got your typical lighthouse with red and white, or black and white, stripes.

“And in Withernsea you’ve got a lighthouse right in the middle of the town. I guess they were concerned about erosion, which is why they put it where it is, and in the meantime the town has grown up around it. So you have this gigantic edifice right in the middle of the town. And that’s what I love, it’s the stories around the lighthouses and the local community.” His favourite lighthouse in Yorkshire is the one at Spurn, by the mouth of the Humber estuary. “I grew up in an area very similar to that. It changes from hour to hour and you have fantastic sea life there as well. I know the lighthouse is no longer operational but it’s just in a lovely spot.”

The Whitby High lighthouse (at the entrance to the harbour) is another one he’s particularly fond of. “What I like about Yorkshire’s lighthouses is the variety. The one in Thorngumbald is really interesting. It’s very industrial looking and quite the opposite to what you expect a lighthouse to look like, though in many ways exactly what you’d expect coming into a harbour.

“Then you’ve got Flamborough Head with one of those big lighthouses which could be straight out of Wuthering Heights – you can just imagine Catherine running down the hill.” Though Covid slowed things down for a time, his coastal trips are back on again. “Bit by bit I’m ticking them off,” he says.

When he visits each lighthouse, he takes photographs and draws a couple of sketches to get the composition, before creating the finished illustrations digitally back at his studio in Ireland. “I want them to hark back to those old travel posters because I think they’re very evocative.”

Lighthouses tap into our imagination in a way that few other buildings do. “They’re part of our built heritage and we’re at a turning point now. Most boats and ships don’t need lighthouses any more because they have GPS, though they do still use them as guiding posts. But a good proportion of them are not needed any more so we have to figure out what we’re going to do with them and how we’re going to maintain them for future generations. Spurn is a great example. You can go to the top of the lighthouse and look up the coast and its part of the nature reserve there.

“At Withernsea, there’s a lovely museum attached to it. Some have been turned into private houses, but there are others that look a little worse for wear.” Whatever their role today, they all have a story to tell. “Some of them are the most extraordinary feats of engineering.”

Lighthouses evoke the romance and adventure of life at sea and offer a reassuring presence at night. Even today, they are a welcome first sight of safe harbour, and also act as markers, beacons, and in the case of yacht races, destinations in themselves. They also carry an air of mystery and bygone days of pirates, shipwrecks and ghost stories.

Roger believes this sense of nostalgia is undeniably part of their appeal. “There’s a mix of romance and this gothic idea of a tower and a light and a woman running down the beach, but there’s also this notion of a guiding light that brings you home. Lighthouses probably started out with fishermen’s wives putting a candle in the window of a cottage.”

Lighthouses aren’t only important to those people whose lives are mostly spent at sea, they’re also popular with ramblers and walkers as markers in the landscape, while for others they’re a precious childhood memory and a familiar sign of where they grew up.

“They’re part of our industrial heritage and they deserve to be celebrated,” says Roger. “I think everybody has their own favourite and they appeal to us in a very elemental way.”

For further information and to order prints from the collection, go to lighthouseeditions.com