July 2025 update:

Martech’s Paul Ellis peers from a yet to be renovated window of the Lighthouse as Shorty’s workers create a constant machine gun like noise as they literally stitch the walls back to their former glory.

There have been many hours of drilling, capping and sanding before the ‘sewing circle’ took up their tools. Ensuring the cracks neither extend or widen further, involves an intricate process of interlocking bolts and deeply embedded metal ‘stitches’. It takes an hour to complete an inch and then there is the final finishing inside and out before sand blasting and painting can take place.

A completed ‘mend’ is a work of art, akin to a surgeon’s stitches or staples closing a wound.

This meticulous and time-consuming work will be completed in readiness for the final push in the second half of the 2025/26 summer, when the ICC Commonwealth Lighthouse specialists return in January to oversee the completion of even more intricate aspects of the work.

The project is pretty much on schedule, and still just within the original budget of £1.5 million, raised equally by Beauchene Fishing Company, FIG and Consolidated Fisheries Ltd.

Some additional infrastructure will be constructed in the next few months, by local contractor Shortys Building Services, to provide shelter for blasting and painting processes.

The shelter build will eventually reach 5 storeys as the work progresses up the Lighthouse and the dome (currently housed and undergoing repair) is repositioned. 

Beauchene Fishing’s Cheryl Roberts, who spearheaded the project, said that 2025 will be the last winter that this precious part of Falklands’ maritime heritage looks tatty and vulnerable. “The completion of the restoration in 2026 will ensure Cape Pembroke Lighthouse remains in the heart of the community and stands strong through many storms to come.”