By the close of 1751 the four towers of the lighthouse were nearly completed, and early in the following year the size of the grates in which the four fires were to blaze, and of the lanterns which were to envelop them, were being actively considered by Fonnereau and the Trinity House. The lighthouse and its final completion were quite the talk of the day in the West of England, and the kindling of the fires on the evening of August 22, 1752, was watched by thousands of spectators, who had flocked to the Lizard from the adjacent towns and villages. Though it was the middle of the eighteenth century, there were doubtless many in that Cornish crowd who did not regard this establishment of a lighthouse with quite as much satisfaction as those who had our sailors’ welfare at heart; wrecking, and the love of it, had yet a place in the heart of Cornishmen—and of the Cornishwomen too, for that matter: the keenest searchers after the harvest of the sea were not, by any means, _all_ of the sterner sex! Coal fires, shut in by glass, did no better at the Lizard than elsewhere, and very soon came complaints from all sides of the feebleness of the Lizard lights; yet Fonnereau made no change. The plan worked economically, and that is probably all he cared about. But better days for the mariner were at hand. The Trinity House, by the end of the century, was growing into something very different from what it had been; public-spirited men sat at its council-board, and so soon as Fonnereau’s term expired the corporation took over the control of the lighthouse, substituting oil lamps for the shut-in coal fires. A great deal of structural alteration was needed for this, and whilst it was being carried out no better light was given than that of ordinary lanterns lit by oil and fastened on poles or masts. Such lights were, of course, entirely inadequate, and to minimize as much as possible the inconvenience, the Trinity House bade its labourers work their hardest, week-day and Sunday alike. This was too much for the piety of the neighbouring clergy, magistrates, and villagers. To them the safety of numberless sea-borne souls was as nought to the evil example set by the wicked carpenters and stonemasons who worked at the lighthouse on the Lord’s day. The parson of Lizard Town called these men into his study, read them a serious lecture, and with threats of legal prosecution frightened them out of doing another stroke of work that Sunday. Before the next a happy compromise was arrived at: considering the urgency of the case, the parson and magistrates would say nothing so long as operations were suspended during service-time!