Museum focuses on lighthouses

From February 2010 the National Maritime Museum Cornwall will be shining a light on the world of lighthouses and their keepers with a major new exhibition entitled Lighthouses: Life on the Rocks.

From the massive scale of these triumphs of engineering to the tall tales of the lighthouse keepers themselves, this exhibition will illuminate these incredible stories before they slip out of living memory.

The UK's last manned lighthouse was converted to automatic operation in November 1998, and this evocative exhibition will explore the lives of the last of the lighthouse keepers.

For centuries these iconic beacons of light have protected our seas and Life on the Rocks will feature an incredible array of objects, both large and small.

A massive four tonne optic, with its dazzling array of prisms and lenses, will form a sculptural centre piece to the exhibition.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to step inside the world of the lighthouse keeper, with a reconstruction of a lighthouse's living quarters, featuring original curved furniture from Godrevy Lighthouse and objects which reflect the life of a lighthouse keeper.

Theirs was a life of strict routine and relative isolation and to fill their time, when not tending to the light, these men would write poetry, craft ships in light bulbs or come up with ingenious ways of supplementing their limited supplies, such as kite fishing!