The main defect of the lighthouse consisted of the faultiness of the material of which it was built; for, like Winstanley’s, it was of wood. The means employed to fix the work to its foundation proved quite efficient; dove-tailed holes were cut out of the rock, into which strong iron bolts or branches were keyed, and the interstices were afterwards filled with molten pewter. To these branches were firmly fixed a crown of squared oak balks, across these a set of shorter balks, and so on till a basement of solid wood was raised, the whole being firmly fitted and tied together with tre-nails and screw-bolts. At the same time, to increase the weight and vertical pressure of the building, and thereby present a greater resistance to any disturbing forces, Rudyerd introduced numerous courses of Cornish moorstone, as well jointed as possible, and cramped with iron. It is not necessary to follow the details of the construction further than to state that outside the solid timber and stone courses strong upright timbers were fixed, and carried up as the work proceeded, binding the whole firmly together. Within these upright timbers the rooms of the lighthouse were formed, the floor of the lowest—the store-room—being situated twenty-seven feet above the highest side of the rock. The upper part of the building comprehended four rooms, one above another, chiefly formed by the upright outside timbers, scarfed—that is, the ends overlapping, and firmly fastened together. The whole building was, indeed, an admirable piece of ship-carpentry, excepting only the moorstone, which was merely introduced, as it were, by way of ballast. The outer timbers were tightly caulked with oakum, like a ship, and the whole was payed over with pitch. Upon the roof of the main column Rudyerd fixed his lantern, which was lit by candles, seventy feet above the highest side of the foundation, which was of a sloping form. From its lowest side to the summit of the ball fixed on the top of the building was ninety-two feet, the timber column resting on a base of twenty-three feet four inches. “The whole building,” says Smeaton, “consisted of a simple figure, being an elegant frustum of a cone, unbroken by any projecting ornaments, or anything whereon the violence of the storm could lay hold.” The structure was completely finished in 1709, though the light was exhibited in the lantern as early as the 28th of July, 1706.