The topmost sketch on the present page is perhaps its most ambiguous. The drawing describes an ascending sweep of coastal land, apparently on the edge of a cliff, which curves as it recedes into the background at top left and is marked by four intermittent architectural structures. In the foreground, again on the left, Turner delineates a squat, cylindrical tower with a distinctive short turret jutting out at the top and an opening cut into the inland-facing side. It is possible that this is what was known as the Lower Light at South Foreland; a smaller structure built much closer to the cliff edge, which was completely rebuilt in 1846 and was ostensibly designed to be used in conjunction with the Upper Light: ‘The seamen would line up the two lights, and when the Upper Light shone directly above the Lower Light they could steer safely past the southern tip of the Goodwin Sands’.
2 This would seem to qualify the suggestion that the tall tower at the top of the page, further away from the precipice, is the Upper Light of the main lighthouse at South Foreland, again pictured before it was completely rebuilt in the mid nineteenth century.
3 The two outstanding structures, one closer to the foreground between the two lighthouses, and the other to the west of the Upper Light, in the distance at top left, might constitute houses or another manner of outbuildings, perhaps associated with these original lighthouses.