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Dunston Pillar

Updated: Apr 29, 2023

Travelling along the A15, the road that runs between Sleaford and Lincoln, many drivers must have been intrigued as to the origin and purpose of the stone tower that nestles just off the carriageway in the edge of a small wood. Dunston Pillar is an unusual sight in a fairly plain landscape.

The pillar was built in 1751 by Sir Francis Dashwood. Of stone construction, it was 92 feet tall, topped with a huge 15 feet high lantern. This amazing construction's original purpose was to act as a beacon on the heath, a guiding light for those travelling after dark. Although the pillar now sits just beside the A15, it was in a remote area crossed only by pathways and rough tracks before this road was created. The area was said to have been a dangerous place with highwaymen at large. The lighthouse made the heath safer.

This extraordinary construction, the only known inland lighthouse, became quite an attraction, and around the base of the pillar, refreshment rooms and pleasure grounds were provided for visitors’ entertainment. It became a fashionable meeting place for the locals and day trippers from Lincoln. The lantern was regularly lit until 1788, was last used in 1808, and fell from the pillar during a storm in 1809. But the construction of the new road in 1788 had really been the beginning of the end for the light.

In 1810 the Earl of Buckingham had the lantern replaced with a statue of George III. The statue was by Mrs Coade and modelled by Joseph Panzetta. The mason for this work was John Wilson, who is laid to rest in Harmston church. He died falling from the pillar during his work. His epitaph reads, “ He who erected the noble King; Is here now laid by death’s dark sting.”

During the second world war, the pillar was found to be in the flight path of a nearby airbase, and the RAF shortened it. The statue was unceremoniously removed, and what is left of it can be seen to this day in the grounds of Lincoln Castle.

Well, that is the story of Dunston pillar, and on first read, it seems fairly straightforward. However, I do feel it raises some questions that need answering.

1. How many people actually crossed the heath at night and needed a light to guide them?

2. How would the lighthouse make the heath safer from highwaymen and other perils?

3. Who was Sir Francis Dashwood, and why was he building lighthouses in Lincolnshire?

In the mid-18th century, the heath was, as it is still today, sparsely populated. Those that lived in the area would have been farmers and farm labourers, with a few tradespeople supporting local village communities. There was no electricity, no motorised transport, and little reason for regular travel at night. This was a rural community. The residents would have grown up in the area. They would know which tracks and pathways to take to get to where they wanted. The heath would have been a crisscross pattern of pathways and tracks that the locals would have used to get from village to village or to access fields and farms. The tracks would more or less follow similar routes to the current lanes and footpaths, and those that needed to travel at night would know them.

Anyone not local would travel on a main route or have a guide. At the time, the main Sleaford to Lincoln road ran to the East of the current A15 via Ruskington and Metheringham. The lighthouse would be of no use to them.

Farmers and labourers are the most likely to travel during dark hours. They would, particularly through the winter months, require to be in their fields for first light. During the lambing season, they would be out all hours of day and night, and regularly they may have needed to travel to the markets held at Lincoln and Sleaford. So it is possible that Dashwood built his lighthouse to serve the local farming community. But would they really need such a construction to help them? For centuries before the lighthouse, people managed well enough to traverse the heath. They would be local people with local knowledge. They would know the paths and byways well and would not need a distant light to help them navigate.

How many would need to traverse the heath at night? To justify the construction of a lighthouse to guide travellers, one would imagine the heath to be covered by hordes of lost wayfarers blundering their way around, lost and incapable of navigating.

Surely if it was a navigation aid, why not build the light at a major junction of lanes, for example, at five lanes end, which is not far away, and, as the name suggests, is the connection of five of the main pathways across the heath? There is no evidence of there being any early major crossroads where the pillar was built. So what possible purpose could it serve in helping people navigate across the heath at night?

The extraordinary cost of such a project seems to be out of all proportion to the number of people that could possibly have gained benefit from its construction. So perhaps it should just be considered a folly, a whim of Sir Francis Dashwood. So who is this constructor of inappropriate architecture, and can we shed any further light on why he would build here on the heath?


A smiling Francis Dashwood in fancy regalia and turban holding a large drink

Dashwood was born, an only son, in 1708. His father, also Sir Francis, was a wealthy businessman who had made his fortune trading with the Ottoman Empire. His mother, the second wife of four to Sir Francis Sr., was Lady Mary Fane, the eldest daughter of Baron Le DeSpencer. His mother died when he was only two years old, and his father when he was 16 years old. So it was that at just 16 years of age, he inherited a substantial fortune, the family estate at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire and his father’s Baronetcy.


Following his early education at Eton, Sir Francis continued his education through the means of the grand tour. These were popular amongst the great and the good of the time and were essentially extended holidays in Europe. These travels around the major European countries were punctuated with visits and stays at the courts of the host countries. The purpose of the trips was to expand cultural knowledge and experience intellectual stimulation. When a teenager, the very wealthy Sir Francis was reportedly more interested in baser stimulation. The museums and galleries of Europe were certainly visited, but alehouses and bordellos were of as much if not more, interest. On one of these great tours in Italy, Dashwood was introduced to occultism. Fascinated, he became immersed in the subject, and his future life and reputation were shaped.


Once his wanderlust began to settle, sir Francis set about restoring his family estate to its former glory. It was now that his love of the occult began to manifest itself in his daily life. The murals and frescos in the house featured the myths of Bachus and Ariadne. However, his cultural learnings from his travels also shone through with the establishment of “The Society of Dilettanti”. This Society, made up of serious art connoisseurs, sponsored expeditions by architects and draughtsmen to survey and draw ancient classic buildings and ruins. The Society did have another side to it, though. They often performed quasi-religious rites in outrageous costumes, followed by bacchanalian feasting.

In 1741, as MP for New Romney, Sir Francis was elected to the House of Commons and proved to be an effective member of parliament. Following his parliamentary career, Dashwood was awarded the position of Post Master General, a role he would fill until his death. His contribution to society broadly appears to be substantial.

In 1745 to the shock of his close friends, Sir Francis married Sarah Ellys, the wealthy widow of Sir Richard Ellys. The shock was because of Sarah’s Pious and prudish demeanour, which contradicted his own lascivious lifestyle. This marriage, however, gives us our link to Lincolnshire. The Ellys family estate was at Nocton, a short distance from Dunston Pillar. Her wealth could possibly explain the attraction to Sarah. Dashwood certainly knew how to spend money, but it could also be explained by the fabulous library that Sarah’s husband Richard had amassed. The Ellys library is still considered an impressive collection and is housed at Blickling Hall in Essex under the ownership of the National Trust. His love of the occult drove Dashwood and it is certainly possible that Richard Ellys’s library contained rare works he wanted to get his hands on. Dashwood’s own library was later on in his life considered to be extraordinary, and it contained many rare manuscripts and books associated with occult and religious subjects.

How much time the couple spent at Nocton is unclear. Certainly, at the time of the construction of Dunston Pillar, Sir Francis’s attentions were firmly fixed around his estate in Buckinghamshire. In fact, in the same year as its construction, he was in West Wycombe establishing his most famous society, known variously as “The order of the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe”, “The Monks of Medmenham” or most famously as “The Hell Fire Club”. The group was based around all of Dashwood’s key interests – sex, drink, food, blasphemy, the occult and the finer interests of arts and politics.

The Hell Fire Club flourished and attracted prominent figures from the worlds of art, politics and business. To give it grand and appropriate surroundings for its lurid meetings, Dashwood acquired and extensively restored a disused 12th-century Cistercian Monastery called Medmenham Abbey, only a few miles from his West Wycombe estate. (The Cistercians giving us an intriguing link to the Knights Templar.) The club was to enjoy exceptional notoriety, and the meetings in the abbey were said to be full of occult ritual and sexual depravity. With sexual acts depicting ancient rites being carried out on the altar and well-known ladies of society offering their services.

Dashwood’s notoriety grew as did that of his famous Hell Fire Club, and the rest of his life was devoted to his estate and his occult life. He died in 1781, leaving the bulk of his fortune to his illegitimate daughter by an actress.

I contend that while Sir Francis was a notable public figure and did good work for the public, he was not particularly noted for his altruism. So his building of a lighthouse purely to facilitate the ease of nocturnal travel of a handful of locals across the heathland of Lincolnshire seems somewhat out of character. It would be much more in character if the beacon had some deeper or occult meaning attached to it. So what could that deeper meaning be?

It is debatable whether Sir Francis Dashwood established the Lincoln Club around the same time that the Pillar was erected. Perhaps the lighthouse is in some way connected to the Lincoln Club? The club, discussed in another story, met at the Green Man Inn a short distance along the road from Dunston Pillar. These gentlemen’s clubs that Dashwood proliferated seem to have been his way of extending his influence and power. The Lincoln Club members were Members of Parliament, Peers of the realm, and the landed gentry. His relatives were also members. By partying with these people, he could influence significant political and financial decisions through friendship and perhaps blackmail. Maybe he was the Geoffrey Epstein of his day. A politician that had taken part in some shady occult rights might be persuaded to act in Dashwood’s favour.

The positioning of Dunston Pillar is intriguing, mathematically accurate and exquisite. Sir Francis Dashwood must have been very proud of himself when he worked it out. If one draws a straight line between the Templar preceptory at Bruer, and the Templar manor house at Mere, then Dunston Pillar sits precisely on that line. Clearly Dashwood was fascinated by the Templars and built his lighthouse in a position between the two Templar properties. Interestingly it was not a random point on that line either, the position on the Bruer Mere line was very specific. If at the point Dunston Pillar sits on the line, one draws a line eastwards at 90 degrees to it, rather interestingly this new line passes directly through the Cistercians Kirkstead Abbey, which is situated almost 18 Km away.

What a fascinating link! Here Dashwood is, on the map, geometrically illuminating the link between the Templars and the Cistercians. On the ground, he is literally illuminating the link between them. He leased a Cistercian Abbey at Medmenham and was well-educated in occult matters. This link between the Templars and the Cistercians would most definitely have been at the top of his mind when constructing his amazing lighthouse.

Just to confirm the geometry and make it a little more exceptional, the line between the pillar and Kirkstead Abbey runs parallel to the line that runs from Brant Broughton to Bloxholm, the defining line of the pentagram.


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