The red-and-white tower standing in the sea at the foot of England's highest chalk cliff, just west of Eastbourne
Beachy Head Lighthouse is the one people picture when they think of this stretch of coast: a squat red-and-white banded tower sitting in the surf directly below the great white cliff. Trinity House, the body that runs England’s lighthouses, built it at the foot of the headland and first lit it in 1902. The earlier light, Belle Tout along the clifftop to the west, had a serious flaw, in that it stood so high up that it was often lost in low cloud and mist. Putting a new tower down at sea level, right where the danger was, solved the problem.
The lighthouse works automatically these days and there is no public access to the tower itself, which stands offshore below the cliff. But you do not need to get onto it, because the whole point is the view down from above. The clifftop path here is part of both the South Downs Way and the King Charles III England Coast Path, and from the grass at the top of Beachy Head you look straight down onto the tower with the sea beyond.
A word of real caution: this is a genuinely dangerous edge. The chalk is unstable and undercut, and people have gone over after straying too close for a photo. Keep well back from the lip. The easiest approach on foot is from Eastbourne to the north-east, or from the pub and car park at East Dean inland, with Birling Gap and the Seven Sisters carrying on westward.
