Pencarrow lighthouse

Pencarrow lighthouse

After several ships foundered at the entrance of Wellington Harbour, the Wellington provincial government built New Zealand’s first permanent lighthouse above Pencarrow Head. Made of cast iron, and assembled on site, its light first shone on 1 January 1859. The keeper was Mary Jane Bennett, New Zealand’s only woman lighthouse keeper. Because fog sometimes hid the beam, a second, sea-level lighthouse was built in 1906. The shed halfway down the hillside in this 1936 view was used to operate the fog signal.