An octagonal medieval tower above Chale Bay on the Isle of Wight, put up as penance for looting wine from a wreck
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Locally nicknamed the Pepperpot, the tower was built as penance for Walter de Godeton, a landowner threatened with excommunication after he made off with wine casks from a ship that went down off Chale Bay. It was finished in 1328 and combined a chapel with a lighthouse, with a priest paid to keep a light burning and pray for sailors lost at sea. The tower is perched near the top of St Catherine’s Down, one of the island’s highest points; low wall remnants are all that’s left of the chapel building it was once attached to. You reach it on a walk across the down from the Isle of Wight Coastal Path; there’s no charge. A few paces away is an even older feature, a Bronze Age burial mound around 4,000 years old, dug into by archaeologists in 1925, who found bones and flint tools inside.
