The Bishop Rock (Cornish: Men an Epskop)[1] is a skerry off the British coast in the northern Atlantic Ocean known for its lighthouse.

It is in the westernmost part of the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago 45 kilometres (24 nautical miles) off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain.

Shovell's remains were repatriated to England by order of Queen Anne shortly after their initial burial in the Isles of Scilly.

In the early hours of 12 October 1842, the 600-tonne paddle steamer Brigand, a packet boat, which was en route from Liverpool to St Petersburg, struck the rock with such force that it stove in two large bow plates.

[9] The government did not take up the offer; but Trinity House surveyed Bishop Rock in 1843 with a view to building a lighthouse, and under their Engineer-in-Chief, James Walker, construction work began in 1847.

It was fitted with a 4-wick oil lamp by Wilkins & Son and a large (first order) fixed catadioptric optic by Henry Lépaute,[14] and shone its light for the first time on 1 September 1858.

During an especially heavy storm in April 1874 the tower was severely and repeatedly shaken by a succession of 120 ft (37 m) waves, which shattered the reinforced glass of the lantern and sent cascades of water down through the living quarters.

Later that year James Douglass (who had succeeded Walker as Engineer-in-chief at Trinity House) returned to Bishop Rock with a team of men to reinforce the lower section of the tower using broad iron bands, which were bolted through the stonework.

[19] In the winter of 1881 a further series of storms battered the lighthouse, wrenching sizeable blocks of granite away from the structure just above the high water mark.

He began drawing up designs to reinforce the structure by laying massive granite blocks into the rock and dove-tailing them onto the lighthouse.

The stones were cut and dressed off site, to precise dimensions, before being conveyed to the rock by steamer and then individually winched ashore.

[24] A separate small Petter-engined generator provided electricity for the keepers' domestic use from 1955; it replaced a petrol-driven machine which had been installed during the war to power a radiotelephone (enabling direct verbal communication with ships, the shore and other nearby lighthouses).

[30] On the 144th anniversary of the destruction of James Walker's original iron tower (5 February 1994), a storm caused severe damage to the gunmetal entry doors, which had to be replaced;[31] they too became an exhibit at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.

Prior to automation, the floors of the lighthouse were occupied as follows in 1911[34] (with later changes of use noted in italics):[19] In December 1946 the BBC sent two radio reporters, Edward Ward and Stanley Coombs, to Bishop Rock as part of a programme of round-the-world Christmas messages, a format that had already been used before the Second World War.

Gale-force winds and heavy seas prevented their return for almost a month, and food supplies for the five men in the lighthouse began to run out.

[37] The rock is the subject of a short orchestral descriptive work by the late Doreen Carwithen (Mary Alwyn), which was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Richard Hickox.

The lighthouse featured in BBC TV children's programme Blue Peter in 1975, when presenter Lesley Judd visited.