How many different lights do you use in a day? A walk around a house will reveal many different lighting systems. We need bright spotlights in a kitchen so we can see clearly to prepare food. Lights inside a fridge come on only when the door is open, when we need to see inside. Bathroom lights are bright too and some combine with mirrors so we can shave or put on makeup in a good light. Bedside lights are often small as there is no need to light up the whole room when we just want read in bed. Sitting room lights can be very varied; uplighters and downlighters to create atmospheric pools of light, centre light fittings to cast a wide light over the entire room.

Our built environment requires lighting solutions. For example, streets are lit at night by lamps on tall posts, enough to allow us to see where we are going, but not enough to glare into bedrooms when we are trying to sleep. At home and work our lighting is static. We move around it as it is designed for a certain place in a building. When we need mobile lighting solutions, torches are useful, and the candle will take us anywhere and everywhere when the electricity fails.

The Tudors had only fire and candle power, so what they could achieve after dark was limited. Candlelight creates soot and smoke, thus adding to the dirt indoors. Candlelight is soft, flickering and attractive, but cannot be turned up or down, and more than one candle at a time would be needed for reading. Many Tudor families got up at sunrise to make the most of the daylight, and in the summer this could be as early as five in the morning.

Think of the world before electricity - no TV, no computers, and no electric light. Light is a basic human need and from early times, humans have used fire to light the dark nights and dark spaces.

In Tudor times, electricity had not yet been discovered. All the Tudors' lighting came from firelight and candles.

Lit candles on their own can be blown out easily. If you walked around the house with a candle then a cupped hand was often enough to protect the flame from draught, but outside in really windy weather, a candle had no chance of staying alight. The Tudors had no street lighting, therefore candles powered outdoor lights. To allow an outside area to be lit, and to protect the candle from the wind and rain was a design challenge, especially at a time when glass was very expensive.

The lantern is made out of cut sheet metal joined together by welded joints. It is pierced with small slits that protect the candle inside, but lets light shine out. It has a hinged door that opens so that you can put a candle inside. The roof of the lantern is high so it can take a long candle. The lantern can be hung by its hook on a stick and carried aloft, or it can be attached to a wall.

The light from the lantern is not strong but it is a good guiding light.