Dunston Pillar

's A Selection of Views in the County of Lincoln (1801)]] The original land lighthouse was commissioned by Sir Francis Dashwood (better known as the founder of the Knights of St Francis, which became the Monks of Medmenham, later called a Hellfire Club) in 1751 as a gift to his wife Sarah (Ellys) Dashwood, who feared crossing the dark heath near her childhood home, Nocton. The purpose of the land lighthouse was to improve the safety of 18th-century travellers crossing a particularly treacherous area of the county known for its many incidents of robbery by highwaymen. In the 1843 Journal of the Agricultural Society it was described as the "only land light-house ever raised". The structure…