Visitors to the Kommetjie Festival, in November, will have a chance to explore the Slangkop Lighthouse, for free, on the day.

The Kommetjie Festival will take place on Saturday November 16, from 6.45am to 11.45pm.

Visitors will be able to climb to the top of the 33-metre-tall lighthouse, which celebrated its centenary in 2019, and take in the 360° views of the coastline.

According to Navigational Systems, Transnet National Ports Authority, Slangkop Lighthouse is the tallest cast-iron tower on the South African coast.

It was commissioned on March 4, 1919 and is one of 45 active operating lighthouses. The lighthouse is protected under the National Heritage Resources Act and has a range of light for 30 nautical miles.

Its original cost was £14 358.91, and its intended date of commissioning for 1914 was delayed for five years until after the end of World War I. The fog signal, for reasons unknown, was never installed.

The Slangkop Lighthouse was established as a result of a commission appointed on September 29, 1906, by Sir Francis Hely-Hutchinson, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, to enquire into proposals for the improvement of the existing safeguards against shipwreck on the Cape’s southern coast.

Its tower is constructed out of 17 cast-iron tiers and has a 139 steps and five floors, each 6.1 metres above the other, surmounted by a lantern house 4.25m in diameter and 6.75m high.

The lantern house has three tiers constructed out of 14 cast-iron segments, one of which accommodates the door, and is glazed with 42 glass panes of the same size.

Several vessels have come to grief in the area: the Kakapo, which ran aground on Noordhoek Beach in 1900 during a north-westerly gale; the Clan Munroe, which wrecked to the north of the lighthouse in 1905; and the Maori, a passenger and cargo vessel that wrecked in dense fog in 1909.

For more information about Kommetjie Festival, visit komfestival.co.za

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Kommetjie Festival offers free lighthouse visit