Stan's Eighth Wonder in Ulverston
DAVE WILLIAMSON reports
I revisited a cemetery in the village of Astbury, near Congleton. Whilst looking up some info on a gravestone there, I followed an online link to an item about Ulverston cemetery. Somewhere I have never visited, strange really considering the amount of walking around the town I have done over the dozens of visits there.
This is the object that interested me, a replica lighthouse monument, complete with rocks and waves at the base. A memorial to Dr Thomas Watkins Wilson, born in Edinburgh 1812, spent much of his life in India, died in 1897 and is buried in St Cuthbert’s cemetery in Edinburgh.
His only connection with Ulverston is that he used to visit the nearby Conishead priory, for a few months at a time, over a period of 15 years.
The monument was erected in 1900 and is Grade Two listed. The top of the lighthouse was originally lit with an internal gas burner jet.
Why, who and how this monument came to be erected, paid for (including the gas bill) and maintained, remains a mystery to me. This will be a must-see on my next visit to the town.
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1270178?section=official-list-entry
This following text is taken from the Wikipedia article (as usual, you have sometimes to take what Wikipedia says with a pinch of salt).
Laurel, who had a lifelong love of fishing, used to take a rod to Ulverston's canal, learning from his uncle John Shaw. His favourite place was beyond the old North Lonsdale Iron and Steel Company Ltd, close to his home in Argyle Street. Just behind him was the viaduct carrying the railway from Carnforth. Laurel in later years would recall swinging on a pair of lock gates on the canal as he waited for a bite on his line.
During these fishing expeditions, Laurel would have passed Ulverston's cemetery, where he was impressed by a miniature lighthouse memorial built in memory of Dr Thomas Watkins Wilson. The lighthouse memorial, which is still there today, had a light at the top that was once lit 24 hours a day. The lighthouse memorial was designated as a Grade II listed building in 1996. In 1932, Laurel was being interviewed by a Daily Herald reporter and as they looked up at his name in lights above a theatre in London's Leicester Square, he said:
Looks great but kind of wasteful, but you should see the lighthouse in the graveyard at Ulverston in Lancashire where I was born. They put it up when I was a kid, a tombstone with a light on top. It was the Eighth Wonder of the World to me. Ever since then it's been my ambition to have a tombstone like that.