A young artist moves into a derelict Lincolnshire lighthouse

The idea of someone in their late teens or early twenties going off somewhere in order to ‘find themselves’ has long since become a cliché. In fact, it’s become such a cliché that it’s a brave person indeed who announces such a plan to their friends without first preparing themselves for the inevitable response of pained expressions and sardonic jokes.

However, back before everyone became so world-weary and cynical – in 1933, to be precise – a young man named Peter Scott took himself off to a remote lighthouse on the Lincolnshire/Norfolk border in order to work out what he wanted to do with his life. The experience was to be transformative to such a degree that a sign posted outside that lighthouse today makes the bold assertion that the structure is, ‘The most important building in the history of global conservation…’ It also claims that it’s the ‘most romantic’ as well, but that judgment might better be left to the beholder.

Scott was a 24-year-old under more pressure than most to make something of his life. Born in London, his mother was Kathleen Bruce, a renowned sculptor, while his late father had been none other than Scott of the Antarctic, the polar explorer who perished in 1912 during his attempt to reach the South Pole. Peter had been just two years old when his father died. Even so, he found himself growing up beneath the great man’s shadow – quite literally so, if he cared to visit his mother’s imposing statue of his father that was erected near The Mall just three years after the explorer had met his end. Captain Robert Scott’s reputation has taken some blows over the years, but for most of Peter’s life he was considered a national hero whose name was a synonym for courage. Even Peter’s godfather was famous, the Scotts having recruited author J. M. Barrie for the rôle. Peter did have the advantage of having a mother who was very well off (donations from the public for the widows of the Scott Expedition members had seen to that), but that may only have increased the expectations placed upon the only child of the national treasure.

Always bright, Scott studied natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge before switching to the history of art, graduating in 1931. He had turned out to be not merely a capable painter but one who had the makings of a very fine artist – his talent no doubt inherited from his sculptor mother. He attended the Royal Academy of Art and by 1933 had been offered his first show at a gallery in London. It must have seemed to outsiders that he had set the course for his life. However, Scott felt a sense of unease about his future and cast about for somewhere he could escape to so that he could examine his life in solitude and weigh up his options.

An obsessive wildfowler, Scott had often shot birds at the saltings at Terrington in Norfolk. The flat landscape at the southern end of the Wash was punctured by twin lighthouses built close to the mouth of the River Nene and on either bank. While considering the best place for a bolthole, he remembered these lonely dilapidated buildings three miles out into an enormous tidal marsh. He swiftly rented the one on the eastern bank at £5 per annum and put the proceeds from his London exhibition towards renovation. He added a studio, bathroom, garage and boathouse, and moved in. The decision was to change not only his own life but would also spark a revolution that has shaped wildlife conservation ever since.

The lighthouse had been constructed in 1830 and, despite its name, it never actually bore a light but acted as a customs post and as a beacon to guide ships and boats to the mouth of the Nene. Scott’s American friend Paul Gallico visited him there and was inspired by the setting to write the novel The Snow Goose, with a thinly disguised Peter Scott as its hero. Gallico described the lighthouse as ‘Desolate, utterly lonely and made lonelier by the calls and cries of the wildfowl that make their homes in the marshlands and saltings.’

Ironically, considering the cause to which he eventually decided to dedicate the rest of his life, Scott was drawn to the lighthouse not only because of its remoteness and the opportunities it afforded him to paint, but because it gave him the chance to shoot wild birds.

Scott’s deliberations over his future were further complicated by the fact that he was unconscionably gifted at so many pursuits. If a fiction writer ascribed his list of accomplishments to the hero of a novel, readers would find their belief in him stretched well beyond incredulity. Scott was an expert wildfowler and a competition-winning pairs figure skater. In the years ahead he would also win a bronze medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in the O-Jolle single-handed dinghy competition; race in the America’s Cup, taking the helm of the yacht Sovereign; and also somehow find time to become the British national gliding champion in 1963. In later life he would show himself a very able writer and television presenter. And then, of course, there was his art.

Living at the lighthouse, he earned a living by selling his work, both at exhibitions and in book form, and it was not long before he achieved a certain amount of fame. His subjects were the birds he encountered on the marshes that had become his world and he found that he derived greater pleasure from painting the birds than from shooting them. As the lighthouse and the abundant avian life around it worked their magic on him, he realised what he wanted to do with his life: become a conservationist.

His aspiration would be curtailed by the outbreak of war in 1939. Scott joined up and served in the navy, rising to lieutenant commander in charge of a squadron of steam gun boats in the English Channel, and winning the Distinguished Service Cross for acts of skill and gallantry at sea. Using his observations of birds he was also involved in the experimental camouflaging of warships, work for which he was awarded the OBE at the tender age of 32.

When Scott was demobilised in 1945 he did not return to the lighthouse. It had been requisitioned during the war and had lost much of its marshland to agriculture as Britain attempted to feed its hungry citizens. Instead, he embarked on the life he had determined for himself while staying there. In 1946 he co-founded the Severn Wildfowl Trust (now known as the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust) at Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire. Fifteen years later he and a small group of other British naturalists formed the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature), which is now the world’s largest conservation organisation. He also designed the famous panda logo for the charity, choosing the animal specifically to entice China into getting involved in the protection of wildlife.

He was influential in forcing a moratorium on commercial whaling upon the International Whaling Commission (whom he derided as ‘a butchers’ club’), and in the signing of the internationally recognised Antarctic Treaty, which aims to protect the continent as a scientific preserve free from all military activity. While at the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources he created what is now known as the Red List of Threatened Species, a globally recognised reference to the world’s endangered flora and fauna. He wrote over 20 books and illustrated many others, as well as hosting the popular nature programme Look on British television for 26 years. He was knighted in 1973 ‘for services to conservation and the environment’ and died in 1989 at the age of 79.

The lighthouse on the east bank of the Nene still stands, and there are plans to transform it into a centre dedicated to Scott and his work. Had the young wildfowler not happened upon it, there’s every chance he might simply have made a career out of his art and ended his days still shooting wildlife. Instead, he is lauded today as one of the most influential conservationists who ever lived.

There’s no doubt that his choice would have made his father proud, too. In the last letter Captain Scott ever wrote to his wife, he counselled her to ‘make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games’.