Lighthouse Stories

Working on lighthouses takes us to some of the most remote and challenging places around the coasts of the UK and Ireland. Join us below with Andy our Site Manager, to get an idea of what life is like on a lighthouse........

Duggie, our Rope Access Level 3 taking a tea break with nothing between him and the sea 40m below…..changing the nets on the heli deck – not for the faint hearted!

Lighthouses built on small rocks are known as Rock Stations – they are typically reached by helicopter which lands on the heli deck above the lighthouse.

As well as changing the nets on the top level of the lighthouse, work is done to remove corrosion on the steel work which is particularly aggresive in the middle of the sea!

Fastnet Lighthouse
Ireland

Built: 1897

Height : 54m

One of the most iconic maritime landmarks in the world, Fastnet lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in Britain & Ireland.

The lighthouse keepers on duty on April 11th 1912 recorded the last sighting of the Titanic in the log before disaster struck.

Known to generations as the “Teardrop of Ireland” because it was the last sight of Ireland for emigrants sailing to America. Conditons here are as harsh as can be imagined for structures and metalwork in particular.

The challenges facing Andy and his team when they arrived by helicopter in 2020 were immense. Decades of different types of paint had largely failed and needed to be stripped before priming and painting with modern systems.

Above are the before and after pictures of the metalwork handrails, lantern and dome of the lighthouse.

Below shows the before and after pictures of the helipad and railings of the lighthouse that were tackled during the works.

Innishowen Head Lighthouse (formerly Shroove)

Built: 1837

Height : 34M

Originally designed to aid navigation of shipping in an out of Lough Foyle.

Inishowen lighthouse is unusual in that its height was raised in 1871 by adding a new metal structure on top of the original stone tower to increase the range of the light beam to help guide vessels into Lough Foyle.

Painting the internal walls of the upper metal tower was particularly challenging for Stuart and his team as a bespoke scaffold was required to be constructed inside the upper tower, which is over 11m high.

The fresh paintwork on the upper tower, lantern and dome is gleaming again.

St John's Point Lighthouse
County Down - Northern Ireland

Built: 1844

Height : 40M – The tallest Onshore Lighthouse Tower in Ireland.

One of the 12 great lighthouses in Ireland. In 1846, the Captain of the HMS Great Britain ( the largest vessel afloat on the 7 Seas at the time), mistook the new lighthouse for the Calf lighthouse on the Isle of Mann and ran hard aground West of St.John’s Point.

The paintwork on the huge St. Johns Point tower was in a poor state of repair when the team started work in Summer 2023. Large areas of the paintwork peeled off during the cleaning and preparation stage – which was carried out using cradles and rope access.

The distinctive yellow and black bands on the tower of this iconic lighthouse have been restored with its views across Donegal Bay and towards Sligo, Mayo, and beyond.

Raithlin East Lighthouse
Rathlin Island - Northern Ireland

Built: 1856

Height :27M

In 1898, Guglielmo Marconi successfully transmitted the first commercial radio signals from Raithlin East to Ballycastle on the Northern Irish Mainland. Signals were sent to London to confirm the first sighting of returning trade ships from the US across the Atlantic.

The paint on the stone tower of Rathlin East Lighthouse was in particularly bad repair and required considerable preparation to take off all the loose coatings built up over many years.

The bare stone was primed with a specialist coating which was then coated with exterior masonry paint to bring it back to its best again.

Skerries Lighthouse
Offshore island, Anglesey Wales

Built : 1717

Height: 23M

The last privately owned lighthouse in the British Isles to be bought by Trinity House (1841)

As home to the largest breeding colony of Arctic Terns in Wales, when the team arrived at Skerries Lighthouse in 2021 they had to deal with years of guano covering all of the structures. This required extensive power washing before preparation of the corroded metalwork and masonry could be started.

The Client specified a mixture of Mathys Noxyde, Mathys Dacfill and Keim Royalan coatings for the project.

St. Bees Lighthouse
Cumbria

Built in 1866 (1718- 1st Lighthouse).

Height : 17m

The highest lighthouse in England and the last Coal fired lighthouse in Britain until 1822.

The Client wanted to strip all the layers of coatings from the lighthouse at St. Bees in Cumbria.

The local red sandstone was too soft to withstand grit blasting so instead we used needle guns to gently remove decades of different paint systems. The stone was sealed, primed and painted with the Keim Soldalit system.

As well as the stone tower, the metalwork on the lantern and dome were also stripped back to bare metal, primed with Red Oxide primer followed by Mathys Peganox.

MPS Contracts