The white tower on Fenwick Point has guided ships into Greyling Bay for more than 150 years, but until this week almost nobody outside the lighthouse service had been allowed inside. Now, after a two-year restoration costing €2.1m, the tower and the cottages at its foot are open to visitors, and the first guided tours sold out within an hour.
The light itself still works, operated automatically and monitored from the mainland. What has changed is everything around it. The cast-iron staircase has been stripped, repaired and repainted; the brass fittings in the lamp room have been polished; and the gallery that rings the top of the tower has new railings, allowing small groups to step outside 34 metres above the waves.
Inside the keeper's cottage
The larger of the two keepers' cottages now houses a café with a dozen tables and a terrace facing the bay. The smaller one has been furnished as it would have looked when the last resident keeper left, with a coal range, a logbook open on the kitchen table and oilskins hanging by the door.
Colm Hennessy, who manages the site for the trust that led the restoration, said the aim had been to show the lighthouse as a workplace rather than a postcard. "Keepers wound the clockwork every few hours, through the night, in every weather," he said. "We want people to leave understanding how hard and how lonely that was."
My father kept that light for nineteen years, and I can still hear him on those stairs at three in the morning.
Joan Pettigrew, who grew up in the cottage and now lives in Old Quay, donated several of her family's belongings to the display, including her father's handwritten weather notes. She was among the first visitors to climb the restored tower.
The restoration also uncovered surprises. Workers found the original builder's marks scratched into the stonework at the base of the tower, and a sealed tin of lamp wicks, still unused, hidden behind a panel in the oil store. Both are now on display in the entrance room.
Tours run every hour and cost €9 for adults and €4 for children over eight; younger children are not permitted on the stairs. Bay Ferries sails to Fenwick Point from Old Quay several times a day, and the cliff-top path from Kestrel Park offers a longer way in on foot.