Andrew Turton Peterson 1813-1906 / Page 2 ( 1, 2 )
	He built entirely without scaffolding. Instead he used wooden moulds 6 inches high, which were filled with concrete. When three moulds were filled, the lower one was removed. It was then located on the top of the tower and then filled with concrete. Suitable aggregate seems to have been a problem, and in 1884 he wrote "Shingle matter becoming serious ... enquire about the beach", and indeed he did raid the local beach. The design is very impressive, and here he had some help. He decided to consult Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's Cathedral. Unfortunately Sir Christopher had been dead for 156 years, but this wasn't a problem because Peterson had the services of William Lawrence, an uneducated labourer, who was his medium. Lawrence was able to contact great artists and make "spirit drawings". They published a book "Essays from the Unseen, delivered through the mouth of W.P., a sensitive, and recorded by ATTP". Sir Christopher Wren apparently drafted the design for the tower - curiously it is gothic in design, a form Wren disliked in life. Perhaps he had come round to the idea in the intervening 156 years. . Peterson wanted to prove that concrete was a serious structural material, and despite all the weird seances and so on, the tower is a brilliant demonstration of what concrete can do. He also had another motive. The 1870s saw a serious depression in agriculture, wages were very low and there was terrible unemployment. The tower employed local farm workers for seven years, and Peterson paid well over the odds. When he died in London in 1906 at the age of 93, his remains were cremated and the urn containing his ashes was brought to Sway to rest in the vault under the tower - on a concrete table. .