At most other lighthouses—he is speaking of the ‘high’ or ‘upper’ lighthouse, they were generally in pairs, a high light and a low light—the grate was fastened to a back like a chimney, and exposed only one way to the wind, namely, ‘that to the seaward,’ whilst in the low light there would be exhibited ‘two or three candles closed in with glass.’ But at the Spurn things were of necessity quite different. Here the fire on the high lighthouse must needs show ‘all round,’ and so it was entirely unscreened, standing upon ‘a swaype’ fourteen feet above the top of the lighthouse tower, and burning a vast amount more coal than a fire partly screened would burn; besides, the fire needed to be specially ‘bright,’ and so only ‘picked’ coal was used, which cost threepence a chaldron more than ordinary coal. Then the cost of repairs was exceptional; in such an exposed situation the flames, fanned by a winter’s gale, blazed so fiercely that often three or four of the iron bars of the grate would be melted in a single night. Then the consumption of fuel would be enormous, and ‘four pair of hands’ was too little to feed the greedy furnace and keep it up to the requisite height. If the ‘high’ light was costly to maintain, the ‘low’ light was—as a ‘low’ light—even more so: for at the Spurn this, too, was given by a coal fire instead of by the usual candles, and so cost as much ‘as two such lights elsewhere.’ In addition to all this, the carriage of coal to the Spurn Head was unusually costly, for the way from the nearest spot at which the Newcastle boats could discharge their coals lay, half of it, over soft sand, into which cart wheels sank deeply, and half over ‘a sharp shingle’ that lamed the oxen that drew it. Light-keepers’ salaries were, too, a heavy item; two men and a competent overseer were always needed at the Spurn, and on rough and boisterous nights much additional help was required. Altogether, from the first lighting of the lights in November, 1675, to Christmas, 1677, the expenditure had amounted to £905, and the receipts to £948, a profit of £43 in two years and a month. Charles II thought this was not out-of-the-way; he gave Angel further powers and facilities for gathering his tolls, and at last the grumbling and the moaning died away, not to be renewed till nearly a century later. Then there were worthier grounds for them: the owner was lord of the manor within which the Spurn lighthouses stood, and he would not move them to a position rendered necessary by the continued alteration of the sand banks.