Having recently undergone a major restoration project, the lighthouse has now also opened a brand new interactive and inclusive exhibit in the visitor centre, to learn about the Island’s heritage, the wildlife and conservation of the area, all while being fun for all.
00:00With a £900,000 transformative restoration project completed recently in a brand new exhibit in the Visitor Centre that is inclusive to all ages and abilities, people are saying St Mary's Lighthouse here has never looked better.
00:15The new features brings the island's heritage, natural beauty and wildlife to life in a fresh and engaging way.
00:22To find out more, I spoke with Visitor Centre manager Adam Kelsey.
00:26So, last year we had a huge amount of investment in St Mary's Lighthouse, £900,000 was invested and that money was used to entirely renovate the entire outdoors of St Mary's Lighthouse, so the entire Lighthouse was painted, we had new glazing put in, the exterior walls were sandblasted and she's looking super smart now.
00:45Yeah, I mean St Mary's is a hugely iconic building, so we do attract a lot of visitors, but prior to the works last year she was starting to look a little bit the worse for wares, so whereas people would still come, the numbers probably dropped a little bit, so the works had its impact that we wanted it to have.
01:01We did have things in the exhibition room before, but it was very much handmade by the team here, but now we have a brand new exhibition that has been professionally created, and it's now a much more immersive experience and a more interactive experience for the visitors, allowing them to come and learn about our heritage, but also the biodiversity of the local area, our geology, and to learn about it, and from our point of view hopefully to want to conserve a bit more in the future as well.
01:27Yeah, so some of the things we're really excited about is the new Inside Wildlife Hide, I think it's kind of unique in terms of, I don't know how many places I've got one like it, so now inside we have screens that link to cameras on the outside of the building, and these are streaming footage of the animals that reside in the back of the island, and the key thing about this area is it's a place that we don't want members of the public to go, because this is an area where the animals come out to roost, to sleep, to digest their prey, and so
01:57now the visitors will go into the visit centre, see super close-up images of these animals, without needing to go and disturb them, so it means the visitors get a really good view, but it means the animals get to go about their daily routine without being disturbed.
02:08Other highlights is we now have our new Little Lighthouse Keepers area, so we have a play lighthouse where the children can interact with toys, and also in there we have a submarine with portholes, and inside the portholes is video footage of some of the animals that we find around, say, Mary's Lighthouse.
02:22Another key thing in terms of accessibility is climbing to the top of the tower is quite arduous, not all visitors can do it, whether that's because of a physical impairment or purely because of a fear of height, whereas now we have footage inside the exhibition room of views from the top, but also what the optic room looks like, so they'll be able to see the parts of the lighthouse they wouldn't be able to access, but also the views that they see from the top without even needing to climb to the top either.
02:44We've also got a slightly new vessel finder, and we get asked a lot by members of the public what the ships are that are passing, generally we don't know, but we now have an app on one of the screens where they can literally click on any ship that's passing by on a map, and it'll tell them what that ship is, what it's doing, and where it's been and where it's going.
Be the first to comment