Lighthouse reopens to public after maintenance checks

Flamborough Head Lighthouse and its adjoining cottages are now a gleaming white after a six-week refurbishment project by owners and operators Trinity House.

The iconic building is one of 11 working lighthouses run by Trinity House which are also open to the public.

Work has also been done to ensure the lantern roof is not leaking and to maintain the aerial, which provides satellite navigation information to ships in the North Sea.

Trinity House, the general lighthouse authority for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar, said lighthouses which also served as visitor centres were popular with the public.

A spokeswoman said: "Lighthouses are iconic and are a unique aid to navigation. People like to see inside them to see how they work and look and what they do for the safety of the mariner."

Flamborough is the only one in Yorkshire open to the public.

A lighthouse was first built on the Flamborough headland in 1669 but was never lit.

The current lighthouse was built in 1806 and acts as a waypoint for deep sea vessels and coastal traffic, as well as marking the headland for vessels heading for the ports of Scarborough and Bridlington.

It is an automated lighthouse run from the Trinity House operations centre in Harwich.

Trinity House owns and maintains 69 lighthouses, all of which are now unmanned.

The last keeper left North Foreland lighthouse, in Kent, in 1998.

Guides offer 20-minute tours of the lighthouse everyday except Fridays over the summer, starting at 11am.

The Flamborough lighthouse was automated in 1996 and the beam can be seen for 24 nautical miles.