From Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2008

by Paul Little

A beacon for sailors and a magnet for mystery, with a whiff of scandal, Pencarrow is our oldest lighthouse.

Several sources will tell you that Mary Jane Bennett, first keeper of Pencarrow Lighthouse, was the only woman in our history to hold such a position. But the achievement is wasted on at least one of her English kin.

“One old relative who has now passed on listened to what I said,” relates family historian, retired journalist and Bennett’s great-grandson Paul Bennett, “and said I got it wrong. Mary Jane would never have been a lighthouse keeper. The English relations couldn’t accept it.”

That relative knew of Mary Jane in later life, after she had returned to England and settled into a life of decorum. Her story up to that point had been one of varying fortunes – and levels of respectability.

“She was a bit of a mystery woman,” says Paul. “She appears to have been very secretive. She never had a photo taken. There is not a personal letter or diary or journal in existence, here or in England.”But then, Mary Jane had something to be secretive about.“

The guts of the story is that she eloped to New Zealand with George Bennett. She was the daughter of the squire of a big estate called Braisty Woods in the Yorkshire Dales. George Bennett was a sort of stock and station agent who arrived, made overtures and got told to bugger off.”Which he did but not, it appears, before arranging for Mary Jane to do likewise. They travelled across the world decorously in separate ships, she under the auspices of the New Zealand Company. Both arrived in 1840.

On the voyage, Mary Jane had met the man who would become Wellington’s first mayor, George Hunter, his wife and their 10 children. By the end of the trip, she had been engaged as the latters’ governess. She thus arrived cloaked in a mantle of respectable employment.

Mary Jane and George Bennett married the following year, when he is recorded as being licensee of the Durham Arms in Wellington. He later farmed at Lowry Bay and the family home was made to function as an ad hoc lighthouse when a light was placed in its bay window. This was near the site of the present Pencarrow. It was decided in 1854 that it was necessary to build a more substantial structure there.

New Zealand’s first permanent light-house, Pencarrow, registered as a Category I historic place, was the culmination of many efforts to provide a beacon to protect shipping coming into Wellington from foundering on its rocks. Its construction was approved only under the aegis of Governor Sir George Grey.

The extraordinary shenanigans that went on between provincial and central government over building – and paying for – the lighthouse are well told in Helen Beaglehole’s national lighthouse history, Lighting the Coast.

It was designed by colonial engineer Edward Roberts, and cast in England in sections by the Woodside Ironworks, Dudley. Like many colonial structures, it was shipped in pieces, which arrived in June 1858 and were assembled on the site.

It was envisaged that Bennett would take charge at Pencarrow itself. But he drowned in 1855, leaving Mary Jane with five children and a sixth on the way. She assumed his role and acquired the claim to fame that exists to this day. She remained there for 10 years, bringing up her children at the lighthouse, and she must have served competently as efforts by her male assistant to unseat her proved futile. Although Mary Jane, with her romantic story, gets most of the attention, Paul Bennett is at pains to point out that his great grandfather George is entitled to recognition as the first lighthouse keeper, male or female, in the country.

It was once thought that next to nothing was known of Mary Jane’s life after Pencarrow, although it was always believed she went “Home”. That Paul has been able to find out as much as he did, and has recorded in his book The Bennetts of Pencarrow ,occurred through one of those cases of serendipity without which much history would remain untold.

“A cousin of mine came across the English relatives by accident,” says Paul. “We knew the name of a village where Braisty Woods was. My cousin was in the churchyard and found Mary Jane’s grave. A woman came out and asked what her interest was. And she gave my cousin the name of a relative in Harrogate.”

Mary Jane stayed in New Zealand for 25 years but, eventually, says Paul, “her dad agreed to her returning home. All the children were taken with her, and her father attended to the boys’ education. She died in 1885.”

Mary Jane’s sons all returned to New Zealand, and one even became a lighthouse keeper himself. Her daughters all remained in England with her. The difficulties faced by a single woman without the convenience of a spouse, especially one with children, in the 19th century are well described in the recent The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, by Linda Colley.

Mary Jane’s case may have been similar. “We believe it was considered to have been such a scandal for her to do what shedid,” says Paul, “that she was told to shut up about it back in England. The story given to her family was that she was the widow of a rich New Zealand sheep farmer.”

The later English relatives knew nothing about her time as lighthouse keeper until the contact between the antipodean branches of the family was re-established. One result of this new relationship was that a number of the objects that Mary Jane took home with her to England, including school books, paintings and even her hand-written recipes, were given by the English relatives to be brought back to New Zealand.

Because Mary Jane’s sons returned to New Zealand, she now has a large set of descendants here, who are very proud of their famous ancestors. Ten years ago, 100 of them gathered to visit Pencarrow, and in January 2009, to mark the 150th anniversary of the lighthouse, another similar-sized gathering is planned, with many relatives hoping to make the pilgrimage to the site where their predecessors spent all those lonely years.

So much for Mary Jane’s reputation over 150 years. How has the lighthouse that is the source of her fame survived? It has perhaps weathered the decades in similar fashion, still intact and robust, but needing some “revision” here and there. Accordingly, on the occasion of its sesquicentenary – it first shone on 1 January 1859 and remained operational until 1935 – and because the job needed to be done, it has recently benefited from some restoration work, including the first replacement of its magnificent, 150-year-old roof.

The work was undertaken by someone practising a trade that is common in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland but considerably less known here, spengler Hartmut Reichelt.

“We had been approached by the Historic Places Trust in August last year, when they did some work on the lighthouse,” says Reichelt, who moved here from Germany with his young family 12 years ago. “We’d been invited to look at the roof. There were some holes apparent in the sheets. We looked and found the roof was not in a very good state, which after 150 years was no surprise"

Reichelt’s company, Architectural Roof and Facade Innovations, was commissioned to replace the roof sheets in the original way, replace the battens and repair the weather vane, which wasn’t functional.

“Water had been let in and led to quite extensive damage to the internal lining of the ceiling. We didn’t know the full extent of the damage until we started work. By taking off the roof sheets and the timber substructure, we found the structure itself was quite heavily corroded and had to be replaced as well.”

Says Elizabeth Cox, Heritage Destination Manager at the NZHPT, “It was an extremely tricky piece of work compared to our usual restoration projects. Getting the scaffolding wrapped around the octagonal shape of the lighthouse head was a mission in itself. The scaffolding couldn’t be erected from the ground up, in the usual way, to prevent people clambering up the side. Only the upper part was erected; a challenging undertaking. Also, another tiny piece of scaffolding had to be erected inside the top storey of the lighthouse, where the light used to be.”

Says Reichelt, “The roof was done very nicely 150 years ago. They put a lot of thought into it. Considering the means of transport at those times – everything had to be carried to a remote area and put up – it must have been quite a challenge. We had the support of the helicopter to fly in the scaffolding. That saved a lot of hassle.”

Reichelt, who also does less heritage-focused work, relished the opportunity to put his specialist training into practice here. “I used to work for a company in Munich, which was doing a lot of work for houses under historical protection in various metals. Even though the lighthouse was a small project, it was an interesting and challenging job. For one thing, there was never a day with no wind.”

Next on the to-do list for Pencarrow is to recontour the land around the lighthouse, which has been badly affected by soil erosion over the years. Elizabeth says, “Now that we have fixed the roof, we have to make sure that its feet aren’t sitting in puddles all day. A cast iron structure sitting in this climate, with all this salt water and wind, is always going to be at risk. One trick is to make sure that the paintwork is always sound, which means touch-ups on a yearly basis, or it will just rust away”.

In the meantime, there will be a series of events to mark the initial lighting of Pencarrow on 1 January. Details can be found at www.historic.org.nz.

Pencarrow Lighthouse is a brisk walk eight kilometres south of Eastbourne, Pencarrow Head. The interior is not open to the public except on official open days.