Darnish Reach had no light tower. Boats approaching its narrow entrance instead used two lamps, one in the upper window of a net loft and another behind the parlour glass of a house farther inland. When the lights appeared one above the other, the boat was on the approach its owner expected.
The arrangement depended on two households whose reasons for keeping a lamp were quite different. Ada Verrin mended nets after supper. Across the lane, the Seld family left a light for a son who returned late from the kiln. Neither window had originally been chosen as an aid to navigation.
By the time a subscription was proposed for proper fittings, both lamps had acquired small wooden shelves to preserve their positions. A brass screw marked the place of the loft lamp. The parlour had a pencilled line beneath its curtain rail, where the family could check that the shelf had not shifted.
The first serious disagreement concerned a new cupboard. It would have blocked the inland window, but the Selds were unwilling to surrender the best wall in the room indefinitely. The cupboard was eventually made narrower. The subscription paid for its alteration, a decision that some contributors considered an unexpected form of harbour improvement.
A later painted board shows the approach with both houses carefully drawn and the water reduced to a blue strip. This was not poor composition. The useful knowledge lay ashore: which windows mattered, who maintained them and what small changes could disturb an arrangement on which other people had begun to rely.