Roker Pier and Lighthouse

My wife, her brother and our daughter recently traveled to Sunderland England to see my wife's family's ancestral castle in Sunderland England.  I would like to write a few blog posts about what we saw.

We stayed at the Roker Hotel overlooking the North Sea and the Roker Pier and Light house.  The Pier is a curving ribbon of granite ending in a two-toned granite lighthouse.  It is an amazing feat of engineering and took 18 years to build.   It stands against the ferocious winter storms protecting the mouth of the Wear river  which, at the time it was built, was the sight of great industries, coal shipments and shipbuilding.  It was started in 1885 when England was at the height of its imperial power and finished in 1903.  There is an opposing curved pier on the south side which was built after World War I.  The opposing pier is not as well done, a shabby sister to this one, perhaps symbolizing the ridiculous bloodletting of the war that undid Britain.