History of lighthouses with demands, and to the loss of a number of ships, most notably the Dutch merchant ship Vreede in 1800 with the loss of 380 lives. After the reforms of the Lighthouse Act 1836, owners still managed to collect large dues, of which the largest were for the Smalls Lighthouse which collected £23,000 in 1852 and Trinity House was forced to spend over £1m in buying back leases, including £444,000 for the Skerries Lighthouse. The modern era of lighthouses began at the turn of the 18th century, as lighthouse construction boomed in lockstep with burgeoning levels of transatlantic commerce. Advances
The Maidens lighthouses plans were approved in 1824 and Halpin designed the lighthouses and supervised their construction. Building was completed and the lights switched on by 5 January 1829. The towers were 800 yards apart: the West Tower, on the northern rock, rose 84 feet above sea level and could be seen 13 miles away; the East Tower, on the southern rock, reached 94 feet and was visible from a distance of 14 miles. The keepers of the lighthouses and their families originally lived on site for the whole year. In one case, this led to romance when, in the 1830s, the Assistant