Archive interview with lighthouse keeper Jim Bowling from 1988

Keeping Watch

Welcome to Episode 3 of the second season of KEEPING WATCH - a fortnightly podcast for enthusiasts of lighthouses, lighthouse keepers, light vessels and other aids to maritime navigation.

This week I’m really pleased to be able to share with you a wonderful BBC Radio Kent interview from 1988 with Jim Bowling, who was then principal lighthouse keeper at North Foreland lighthouse.

This was Jim’s final posting before he retired, following a 47 year career as a lighthouse keeper with Trinity House. It was Jim’s son Colin who got in touch to lend us a recording of the interview, and he also managed to find a separate recording of Jim giving a guided tour of North Foreland at around the same time.

The full interview on YouTube: Part 1: https://youtu.be/Z6WLXUbXwhE Part 2: https://youtu.be/_sizpJiv4Lo Part 3: https://youtu.be/3Xgw2NcXfVA

I don’t know what you think, but to me Jim sounds like such an honourable and gentle man - and I would have loved to have met him. I mentioned that his son Colin also found me a recording of Jim conducting a guided tour of North Foreland some time in the late 1980s.

Although the quality of the recording itself isn’t great, it’s still a fascinating record of how the lighthouse operated at that time. So please bear with the echo and background noise, and listen to Jim showing visitors around his lighthouse.

Since he got in touch I met up with Colin and his lovely wife Lin - and we talked about his childhood and upbringing in various lighthouses - including a stint at St Mary’s lighthouse, on the north east coast, where he became a national news story as the boy who could only attend school when the tide was out. He also shared his own memories of his father - including when Jim and assistant keeper Arthur Holmes were paid a visit from a Page 3 glamour model for a Daily Star article about people who have to work over Christmas.

You’ll be pleased to learn that I recorded our conversation, and you can hear it in the next episode of the podcast.

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KEEPING WATCH is brought to you in association with the ALK - The Association of Lighthouse Keepers - a charitable trust in the UK dedicated to keeping lighthouse heritage alive.

Visit the Association of Lighthouse Keepers: www.alk.org.uk