Godley Head lighthouse and jetty
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| The Godley Head lighthouse (undated). Archives NZ/ECan |
When I began writing about the jetties of Whakaraupō I envisaged a sweep around the harbour from Waitata/Little Port Cooper to Magazine Bay, including Ripapa Island and Otamahua/Quail Island. I was never going to tackle the port of Lyttelton itself because that is a whole project on its own – and for someone else. I had no idea that there were, in fact, more jetties to the east of the port – at Te Awa-toetoe/Buckleys Bay (which was gobbled up in the Cashin Quay reclamation) and at Mechanics Bay (last bay before Godley Head).
Buckleys Bay is proving difficult because the few photos I have found are all in Baden Norris’s The Forgotten Bays of Lyttelton and, until I can track down the originals, I have no images. Hopefully that will be included in the book to come. The lighthouse at Godley Head, and the little jetty/landing stage that serviced it, is better documented however and there are great images of the lighthouse though none I have been able to find of the jetty.
It’s a great story I think.
Known by Maori as Awaroa (long water) and then as Cape Cachalot, in memory of the French whale ship Cachalot which was nearly wrecked there in 1838, the name ‘Godley’ (after John Robert Godley, co-founder of the Canterbury settlement) was first used in 1851.
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| Detail, Port Cooper, Port Levy, and Pigeon Bay surveyed by Captn. J. L. Stokes, 1849. Note name 'Cachalot Head'. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, N.Z. |
Once Erskine Bay had been determined as the port location for the new Canterbury Association settlement, there was an urgent need to signal the entrance to the long, narrow harbour, then known as Port Cooper. It was easy enough for boats to miss the harbour entrance completely at night or in foggy conditions. As early as 1849, chief surveyor Captain Joseph Thomas, reported that Cape Cachalot would be an ideal site for a lighthouse. Clearly the prominent headland could also serve a strategic purpose and in 1851 Godley Head was declared a defence reserve.
Securing the funding for the lighthouse took time and it was not until 31 March 1865 that a lighthouse and a lighthouse keeper’s cottage were completed and the light illuminated for the first time. Sixty hectares of the defence reserve was re-gazetted as a lighthouse reserve. Ten metres back from the edge of the headland and over 400ft above sea level, the lighthouse consisted of a 32 foot stone tower topped with a fixed doptric white light, designed and built in England. The keepers’ accommodation, home to the Head and Assistant keepers and their families, was a double stone dwelling with a slate roof, built by a Mr McCosker.
The cottages for the light-keeper and his assistant are very substantial buildings: each house has four good roomy apartments, with store-room and other out buildings attached, and supplied with iron water tanks, capable of storing 3000 gallons. The whole of the works are enclosed by a stone wall about five feet in height.[1]
The total cost of the build was £4,706.[2] Some of the stone was quarried locally but all other materials were brought by boat from Ferrymead to Taylors Mistake and carried up a temporary tramway to the lighthouse site. Perhaps the difficulty of getting material on site prompted the Lyttelton Times comment that the builder completed the work "under very great disadvantage".[3] The light, powered by fuel oil and transmitted by mirrors and glasses, was visible for 34 miles in clear conditions.
Mention of the water tanks is a reminder that, on the barren headland, there would have been no hope of a water supply other than rain water. Here the keepers raised their families. Did they, perhaps, grow a garden inside the stone wall which would have offered some protection from the gales that must have regularly swept the exposed headland? Although remote, the lighthouse attracted visitors, evidenced by the remarkable photos of people posing around and inside the structure.
Mention of the water tanks is a reminder that, on the barren headland, there would have been no hope of a water supply other than rain water. Here the keepers raised their families. Did they, perhaps, grow a garden inside the stone wall which would have offered some protection from the gales that must have regularly swept the exposed headland? Although remote, the lighthouse attracted visitors, evidenced by the remarkable photos of people posing around and inside the structure.
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The lighthouse and lighthouse keeper's family perhaps, c. 1882-5. CCL
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| Lighthouse and keeper's cottage photographed by George Leslie Adkin in 1907. Alexander Turnbull Library |
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| Photographed by L. Hinge. Auckland Weekly News, 1 October 1908. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections |
The lighthouse could be accessed in two ways: via a packhorse track for about two miles along the rocky ridge from the zig-zag at Evans Pass; or by boat to a small stone and wood jetty built in 1867 at the eastern head of Mechanics Bay (also known earlier as Lighthouse Bay). The beach in the bay was covered with huge boulders and subject to an almost constant heavy swell so landing stores for the families and oil for the light was precarious and difficult. From the beach, goods had to be carried by packhorse up the steep 150 metre cliff via a zig-zag path to the lighthouse on its patch of flat headland.
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| Lyttelton Times, 8 March 1866 |
The sea was unforgiving. Three men involved in the construction of the lighthouse were carrying a load of fresh water from Sumner to Godley Head via row boat. The boat capsized on the notorious Sumner bar and one of the men – a Mr Baker – was drowned.
Unfortunately heavy gales in February 1868 completely demolished the jetty and tore slates off the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. The Christchurch architect Benjamin Mountfort was asked to design improvements to the buildings and the jetty. The Lyttelton Times described the sterling job he did in securing the houses.
The roofs of the keepers’ houses and store were stripped, strengthened, braced and covered with corrugated galvanized iron, laid with very deep top and side laps screwed down and secured to the roof, and further protected by iron bars outside at the top and bottom of each row of sheets, bolted at intervals of two feet through the iron, battens, boards and purlines, thus making it impossible for one sheet to blow off, unless the whole roof goes. The roof is also bolted from the principles to the floor of the bedrooms, so that the advantage of all the weight of the floor is brought to bear as a counterpoise against the force of the wind.[4]
Mountfort decided the jetty needed to be relocated westwards to a more relatively sheltered part of Mechanics Bay. About three chains of beach road and seawall were blasted through the rough, heavy boulders. Three large rocks were used as the basis for a landing place and a small storehouse was built on the shore to house stores prior to communication with the lighthouse. Government steamers, amongst them Stella and Hinemoa, would call in once every three months. From 1928 a narrow shingle road from Evans Pass replaced access from Mechanics Bay and allowed supplies to be trucked in.
In December 1879 telephonic communication was established between the Godley Head lighthouse and the port of Lyttelton. The next major development came in 1908 when a fog-signal station was built about 100ft below the lighthouse on the almost vertical cliff face. A rough, steep pathway from the lighthouse to the small, iron hut was cut into the cliff.
The track looks down into the sea all the way, and is handrailed, of necessity; above it the cliffs rise perpendicularly, where they do not overhang. At one point, where a dyke of hard, time-defying rock juts like a huge buttress from the cliff, the path enters a little tunnel. From the steep slopes and numerous angles of the track one comes at last to the little natural platform where the signaling device stands, ugly and alone. Two yards from the hut the platform ends abruptly, a vertical drop forming one wall of a remarkable cut in the rocky mass.[5]
The signal apparatus - Slaughter's Cotton Powder Explosive Signal - fired detonators, by means of a mechanical arrangement, every five minutes. The loud explosion reverberated in the hollowed rock cliffs behind the fog horn station (bringing down loose bits of rock with every shot) and could be heard up to eight or nine miles away - although strong winds reduced its effectiveness. The signalmen and their families at Little Port Cooper found themselves unable to sleep while the foghorn was operating. The fog signal was operated by the lighthouse keeper until 1927 when it was replaced by a compressed air warning system near the lighthouse. A whistling buoy anchored off Godley Head provided another warning for ships.
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| Archives NZ/ECan |
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| Diagram showing the location of the foghorn, lighthouse and fog room. Lyttelton Harbour Board, Archives NZ/ECan |
In 1938, the threat of war in Europe prompted the New Zealand Government to build a coastal defence counter bombardment battery at Godley Head. The lighthouse keeper must have been less than happy with the upheaval. For a start, the contractor building up the earthworks of the defence magazine, managed to dump a load or two over the edge down onto the fog signal track, damaging the steps, hand-rails and ramps. Then, since the lighthouse and keeper’s cottage conflicted with the sighting of the guns, creating a dead water lane out to 16,000 metres, it was decided to relocate both.
In 1942 the lighthouse was moved down the cliff face to where the fog signal had stood and mounted on a new tower. In an interesting recycling move, the old 2nd Order lantern from Cape Foulwind was used to house the 2nd Order fixed lens from Pencarrow Head. A new weatherboard keeper’s house was built inland 100 metres to the west, behind the battery. An assistant keeper's house was constructed 60 metres west of the battery.[6] Mechanics Bay was also brought back into use with several military installations sited in the gully above the beach. Whether evidence of the original jetty and landing stage still remains I don’t know.
In 1942 the lighthouse was moved down the cliff face to where the fog signal had stood and mounted on a new tower. In an interesting recycling move, the old 2nd Order lantern from Cape Foulwind was used to house the 2nd Order fixed lens from Pencarrow Head. A new weatherboard keeper’s house was built inland 100 metres to the west, behind the battery. An assistant keeper's house was constructed 60 metres west of the battery.[6] Mechanics Bay was also brought back into use with several military installations sited in the gully above the beach. Whether evidence of the original jetty and landing stage still remains I don’t know.
The re-siting of the light keeper's house was a protracted affair. The District Engineer suggested that, in the interim, the keeper might be accommodated and fed with the troops stationed at the Godley Head battery. However, as he explained to the Public Works Department in Wellington...
...the matter of shifting the lighthouse keeper at Godley Head appears to have reached an impasse – the defence authorities will not have him within the present defence area. They are not willing to provide him with accommodation or meals in the camp. Confidentially, I may add that Lieut. Colonel Lyon who is in charge of the camp states that the lighthouse keeper is not a desirable person to have mixing with the troops.[7]
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| The caption for this photo refers to the building as the Lighthouse keeper's cottage, Godley Head. The date is 1971. However this was never the keeper's cottage which was rebuilt on flat land at the top of Godley Head (out of range of the guns) when the lighthouse was moved down the cliff. The Lyttelton Harbour Board diagram above refers to it as the 'fog room'. Christchurch Star archive |
The light was connected to mains electricity in 1946 and was automated in 1976 when it was handed over to the Lyttelton Harbour Board. After the February and June earthquakes in 2011 the lighthouse, clinging to the cliff by its ‘toenails’, was decommissioned. The buildings and tower were gifted to the Department of Conservation (DOC) for possible removal. In July 2013 professional abseilers removed the copper dome and outer glass housing from the teetering lighthouse and, after several unsuccessful attempts, a helicopter transported the light in sections to the DOC compound nearby for storage. It had been decided that there was no need to replace the lighthouse. However the persistence of a group of experienced mariners resulted in the installation of a new light which began operating in December 2015.[8]
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| The lighting system, Godley Head lighthouse 1971. Christchurch Star archive |
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| An abseiler working on the cliff above the lighthouse in preparation for its removal, post-earthquake, July 11 2013, http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/hills-and-harbour/8906131/Godley-lighthouse-takes-to-the-air?rm=m |
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| Showing the precarious position of the lighthouse in 2013 and the remarkable job involved in saving it. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/hills-and-harbour/8906131/Godley-lighthouse-takes-to-the-air?rm=m |
[1] Lyttelton Times, 13 April 1865
[2] Godley Head Heritage Trust
http://www.godleyhead.org.nz/the-lighthouse.html, accessed 4 July 2019
[3] Lyttelton Times, 13 April 1865
[3] Lyttelton Times, 13 April 1865
[4] Lyttelton Times, 25 June 1868
[5] Lyttelton Times, 26 September 1908
[6] Godley Head Heritage Trust
http://www.godleyhead.org.nz/the-lighthouse.html, accessed 4 July 2019
[7] Godley Head: Lighthouse and Fog Signal,1936-1948. Archives NZ, CAXP CH150 2954 Box 176
[7] Godley Head: Lighthouse and Fog Signal,1936-1948. Archives NZ, CAXP CH150 2954 Box 176
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