A petition against plans to remove the lens of a remarkable lighthouse in Brittany has garnered over 20,000 signatures amid the ongoing battle to preserve the buildings around France.
The petition is led by an association called Ouessant Vent de Bout’, which insists the decision to remove the Créac’h lighthouse’s lens was taken by the Affaires Maritimes administration, a corps of navy officers working on maritime issues for the Defence Ministry, without consultation.
The lighthouse of Créac’h is one of five located in Ouessant, a small island 25km west of Finistère, but one of four with a unique lighting system called the optique de Fresnel (Fresnel lens). It is a major element explaining its listing as a Monument Historique.
Fresnel lenses reduced the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing it into a set of concentric annular sections.
The lenses are named after Augustin Fresnel, a French engineer who revolutionised lighthouse lighting systems in the late 19th Century in what has subsequently been dubbed “the invention that saved a million ships”.
The lantern was exhibited in Paris during the Exposition Universelle of 1937, two years before its official installation in the lighthouse.
The lenses installed by Fresnel on Créac’h are said to be the most powerful in Europe, projecting light as far as 60km and visible, in certain conditions, up to Lizard Point in the south-west of Cornwall, 170km away.
The fight is part of a larger and longer battle over the maintenance of lighthouses and their heritage in France landscapes.
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“Créac’h is part of the island’s identity. Removing it would deal a blow to the inhabitants of Ouessant. This is how it is felt here,” said Elisabeth Coutrot, secretary of Ouessant Vent de Bout’ and one of the 800-plus inhabitants of the island.
“It symbolises all the efforts and sacrifices of those who worked on building these lighthouses in the 19th Century,” she added, explaining why the petition has been so successful.
As of late January, almost 20,000 people had signed it.
Mercury removal
The Department of Finistère says its decision to remove Fresnel lenses from lighthouses is because they need to be bathed in mercury to function, a metal that France has pledged to get rid of by 2030 as part of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
They are to be replaced with “alternative technologies” according to a press release, although no specific details were given.
Similar work has been implemented on other lighthouses in France in the past, it added.
The association fears any new installation could reduce the range of light from 30 nautical miles to 19, according to its calculation, or a mile below the standard set by the Ministry of Ecology as part of what it defines as a lighthouse.
Ouessant Vent de Bout’ argues that this would endanger sailors’ lives.
“This is what shocked me and why I signed the petition. It is a degradation in terms of security levels,” said Béatrice Francout, owner of Au P’ty Lyonnais restaurant in Brest.
Risky sailing is part of the region’s identity, particularly the Passage du Fromveur – a maritime corridor between Molène island and Ouessant where streams blow up to nine knots and where many ships and sailors have drowned and died over centuries.
Locals poetically refer to it with the saying: ‘Qui voit Ouessant, voit son sang’ (‘Whoever sees Ouessant, sees his blood’). Créac’h, which means ‘headland’ in Breton, was meant to guide sailors to safe passage.
The maritime route that passes through Ouessant is also one of the world’s busiest. Some 150 ships use it daily, representing 70% of the world’s maritime traffic in tons.
Lighthouses as Monuments Historiques
Cedric CAIN
The number of lighthouses around the world has significantly decreased with the advancement of technology, such as GPS, with which all boats must be equipped with by law.
“A lighthouse is a tool that keeps being modified over the years. From a heritage point of view, there’s a big question: Should we keep lighthouses as they are? From a technical historian's point of view, these lighthouses no longer have the function they had in 1939,” said Francis Dreyer, an academic expert on the history of technology and a specialist in maritime and industrial heritage sites.
Dr Dreyer was one of the experts commissioned to take part in a large government study on France’s lighthouses in the 2000s.
The study culminated in the Ministry of Culture listing 14 lighthouses as Monuments Historiques in 2010, including Créac’h and Stiff (also on Ouessant). Only Cordouan’s lighthouse, near the mouth of the Gironde estuary and by far the oldest lighthouse in France, had at that point been listed, in 1862.
The lighthouses of Jument and Nividic, two of the other three lighthouses on Ouessant, were added in 2015.
It represents the culmination of a government policy to preserve as best as it can a building that, at one point, represented France’s maritime might. The Ministry of Ecology has tallied 150 of them along its coasts.
The Stiff lighthouse, which dates from 1695, was the first to be built as part of engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban’s – better known simply as ‘Vauban’ – plan to protect France’s coasts from its enemies. That meant – on Ouessant island – from England.
Créac'h came later, in 1863, as maritime commerce intensified following the Industrial Revolution. Both were built on the island itself. Jument, Kéréon and Nividic were built in the early 20th Century, all in the sea.
Their maintenance became a burden after World War Two. They were progressively electrified and eventually automated, meaning that the work of their traditional keepers became obsolete.
Serge Coatmeur was France’s last lighthouse keeper until he retired in 2016.
Marc Pointud, then president of the Société nationale pour le patrimoine des phares et balises, gave an example of the shabby state of many lighthouses across France in 2008.
“The outstanding wooden roof of Vieille’s lighthouse is falling under the pressure of humidity. As for the mythical Ar Men lighthouse on Sein island, the interior is getting ravaged by humidity and the exterior has degraded,” he wrote.
Tévennec, meanwhile, was in a “critical state of devastation”; Triagoz was described as a “site of desolation with empty rooms where moisture oozes, where stones are displaced and guardrails destroyed”.
The Cour des comptes, France's audit institution, warned about the renovation costs of lighthouses and their strain on France’s finances in a report in 2013.
Many of them have since been transformed into museums. Créac’h will join this number in the summer of 2026 as part of ongoing €11million renovation works at the Musée des phares et balises, the museum tracing the history of maritime signage that is located at the foot of Créac’h lighthouse.
The renovation includes a modernisation of the museum itself, as well as the restoration of the lighthouse.
A representative of the museum did not comment on whether the government was taking advantage of the museum’s renovation to remove the lens and whether the decision was also motivated by safety concerns for future clients touring the lighthouse.
It is unknown what will happen to Fresnel’s lens if it is removed and whether it will end up in the museum.
More than 800 pieces of navigational equipment are already exhibited there, including several Fresnel lenses.
“A Fresnel lens exhibited in a museum is a dead one. These objects are made to be functioning, not admired,” said Ms Coutrot.
