In 1669 Clayton and his partner George Blake received from King Charles II a sixty-year patent for the four sites and work began to acquire land and erect the lighthouses.

At Foulness, the local landowner William Reyes leased them a parcel of land on the cliff top 'for the purpose of erecting a Lighthouse for the benefit of Navigation'.

Although Clayton's attempt had failed, individuals continued to maintain that a Lighthouse at this site was essential, and several appeals were made to the Corporation of Trinity House.

[2] Later that year the new Patent was duly issued by King George I, jointly to Bowell and to Nathaniel Life (Reyes's successor as the owner of the land at Foulness).

[4] Dues were set to shipping at the rate of a farthing per ton of general cargo and a halfpenny per chaldron (25 cwt) of Newcastle coal.

The lighthouse was first lit on Michaelmas of that year; it was an octagonal brick tower, three storeys high, topped by a coal fire enclosed in a glazed lantern.

[5] When lit anew on 8 September 1792, Cromer became only the second lighthouse in England (after St Agnes in 1790) to display a revolving, flashing light - a novelty which is said to have provoked irritation among seamen at the time.

[4] In 1822, the period of the lease came to an end, and Trinity House purchased the property outright; at the time it was still one of the most powerful lights on the English coast.

Though extinguished, Bowell's tower remained standing for several years, eventually succumbing to the waves' actions in 1866 when, together with a sizeable portion of the cliff, it finally slipped down into the sea.

[10] Cromer was the only sizeable Trinity House lighthouse to make use of town gas as an illuminant[11] (though it was also used for the minor lights at Blacknore and Northfleet).

As a consequence of automation the lighthouse keeper's cottage alongside the tower is now let out as holiday apartment although the property is still owned by Trinity House.