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Bill Arnold, the last keeper of Pendeen Lighthouse
Bill Arnold, the last keeper of Pendeen Lighthouse

“I was the last principle keeper here at Pendeen lighthouse. I was here from ‘92 till ‘95, and then I stayed on here as the attendant until 2005. Since which time its been fully automated. It was inevitable, the technology was there, so it was gonna happen, but it was the end of a way of life for all of the keepers. It was a very big part of Cornwall, there were quite a few Cornish keepers, and quite a few Cornish lights. I came out of the forces in 91 and moved down here, joined Trinity House in the mid 70’s and been here ever since. My relationship to Cornwall is very much in the landscape. It’s a bit late in life for me now, but I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else. I shall stay here, and hopefully be carried out in a box. I remember we were on Bishop Rock lighthouse for the Christmas and New Year period, 89. We had a bit of bad weather. We got hit by a heavy sea. And the tower trembled, and it trembled for three or four seconds, but we got hit by a second sea virtually immediately after. It didn’t tremble... it shook. All the alarms went off, we ran up into the lantern room to see what was going on. The floor was awash with mercury. The lens, weighing three tons floats on a bath of mercury, and the shaking of the tower had been so violent it had shook the mercury out of the trough. The first thing we did was get on the blower to control, so that they could put out a notice to mariners. Then we all went and got our space suits on, and masks. We went up with dustpan and brushes and buckets. We spent the next five or six hours sweeping up the mercury and pouring it back into the trough. We eventually swept up enough to refloat the lens and get it running properly. We then notified control, told them the light was back in action. It was about 2 days later that they managed to get the helicopter out to us with mechanics with the specialst cleaning equipment for the mercury. It just so happened that we were due ashore anyway for keeper change. So we came ashore, and as soon as we did they made us all give urine samples. Apparenty a normal mercury level for the average human is err, around 20 and 25 milli - whatever it is - parts per thousand. And we war all up 250, 300. We all had to keep giving urine samples for the next twelve months and it took that long for our levels to drop back to normal. That was the most memorable thing during my my stay.”

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