Hull City Council has won a prestigious award for the restoration of the city’s historic Spurn Lightship.
After a 14-month restoration, the new-look lightship is set to give visitors a first glimpse of Hull’s future as a world-class ‘Maritime City’ destination when the top tourist attraction re-opens in autumn 2024.
It will be the first of a host of new visitor attractions to open as part of Hull Maritime, a £30.3m, five-year project, funded by Hull City Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, to transform the city’s maritime treasures and celebrate 800 years of seafaring history.
Once the project is completed, which is expected to be early 2025, visitors will be able to chart a course through Hull, exploring its contributions to the UK and the world.
The lightship – which guided vessels as they navigated the Humber estuary, one of the world’s most treacherous waterways – will be joined by the return of Hull trawler, the Arctic Corsair, at a new £3.8m ‘eco-friendly’ visitor attraction set to open in autumn 2024.
The Spurn Lightship has been a Hull landmark since opening as a floating museum in 1986 but was closed to the public in 2018 as part of the restoration scheme. It moved for the first time in 35 years for refurbishment in October 2021 but returned to the Marina in 2023.
Now the restoration has won national praise at an awards ceremony staged on The Royal Yacht Britannia.
National Historic Ships UK awarded The Martyn Heighton Award for Excellence in Maritime Conservation 2023 to Hull Maritime for “best demonstrating the principles in Conserving Historic Vessels”.
Judges looked for projects which clearly displayed a conservation approach and secured the long-term future, or a permanent record, of the vessel.
The conservation of the Spurn Lightship, by Dunston Ship Repairs, was extensive, addressing decades of inevitable deterioration including issues with water leakage causing corrosion and decay. The vessel was put in dry-dock several times for conservation led repairs and maintenance, working to a goal to ensure preservation for the next 50 years or more.
For more information visit maritimehull.co.uk
For all other tourism information about Hull, see www.visithull.org
Photo: Hull City Council