It was during renovations to the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse that a workman came across a surprise. Hidden under a step was an old matchbook and canister of film.

Heidi Cowen, owner of the Lighthouse Tearoom, seemed the natural person to receive the finds. She is the fifth generation of Cowens to be involved with Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. Whoever left the treasures hidden in the wall was probably a relative of hers. Her great great grandfather, J. J. Cowen, was the lighthouse keeper in 1858.

He was followed by Miss Cowen?s great grandfather, James St. John Cowen, and grandfather, Rudolph H. Cowen, and her great uncle, William White, among other relatives.

?I believe the matches were from my grandfather,? said Miss Cowen. ?He was never without a pipe in his mouth. He always used those wooden matches.?

At the moment, Miss Cowen is still trying to figure out how to get the old film developed.

She grew up at the lighthouse and had her bedroom where she now serves tea. The family had to leave the lighthouse in 1968 when the light became automated.

Naturally, after 147 years of service to the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, it is somewhat difficult for the Cowens to walk away. They still love the lighthouse passionately.

?The place is blessed with a good feeling,? Miss Cowen said. ?When I go by that door to the lighthouse, I get that iron smell. It just brings back a flood of memory. It reminds me of living here and running meals up to my grandfather.?

Her father, W. A. (Toppy) Cowen, is very concerned about what he sees as the dilapidated state of the lighthouse and he would like to see a Friends of Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Society created to oversee its care.

?I am very concerned about the condition of the lighthouse,? he said. ?It has been going on for two years now. The way that the whole situation has been handled seems rather haphazardly.?

Tourists can not currently go outside on the balcony of the lighthouse, nor can they go onto the catwalk around the light. Tourists troop all the way to the top and are often disappointed to find that they can only look through a small, bleary window.

?When I was a boy growing up around the lighthouse, the place was kept spotless,? Mr. Cowen said. ?We used to cut the grass. We had to do just about everything from keeping the toilets clean to keeping the hedges trimmed. In our day you couldn?t find a matchstick or a cigarette butt out there.

?If my father was sick we would go up and be lighthouse keeper. My brother, Edwin, was involved as a keeper.?

He said when the change came in the late 1960s they were prepared for it.

?We thought it would be inevitable that lighthouse keepers would be done away with,? he said. ?The St. David?s Lighthouse keeper was the first to go and then they closed this one down. Even in my father?s time they put in generators and electricity.?

The beams from Gibbs Hill Lighthouse first shone on May 1, 1846. The idea of it was conceived a few years before because 39 ships were lost on Bermuda?s reefs in one year alone. The lighthouse was designed by Alexander Gordon and was possibly the second iron lighthouse built in the world. Joseph F. Darrell was appointed the first lighthouse keeper.

When the materials arrived a special dock had to be built to bring them ashore, and then convicts carried everything up the hill.

In the end it was 130 feet tall and was weighted at the bottom with 400 tonnes of concrete.

?There were several changes within the light system over the next century,? said Mr. Cowen. ?The principal of winding it up like a grandfather clock existed until it became automatic in 1968. To keep it going around, you had to wind it up like a cuckoo clock. It has weights and so forth.?

The Lighthouse is also well known for being haunted. There have been reports of mysterious footsteps in the lighthouse late at night and customers in the tea room have also had a few close encounters.

?I have never seen anything,? said Miss Cowen. ?Except one time I heard my grandmother calling in the yard. That was eerie. I feel only good feelings about the place. Several customers have seen a woman in a big hat in the evening. We are open for dinner on Saturdays. One customer told me there was a woman waiting to be seated. I went down there, and I said no there is nobody there. The customer was insistent that she?d seen a woman in a big hat. Another time I came in and customers were sitting inside waiting for me to open at dinner. They said they came in because they saw there were people inside already. The customers saw a woman with a big hat sitting in the window.?

Mr. Cowen said his grandfather, Rudy, was quite a character.

?He was well respected as being a very determined but a fair individual and was proud to be Head Keeper for a number of years,? said Mr. Cowen.

Living at the foot of a lighthouse presented some challenges for the Cowens.

?We were always concerned about what landed on the roof of the house as visitors dropped things from the top of the lighthouse and this included the occasional chewing tobacco,? said Mr. Cowen. ?While on watch, it was the responsibility of the keepers to check the total rainfall on a daily basis. A quite simplistic metal container having a funnel type contraption on the top allowed only a small amount of water to enter into a glass tube and this eventually measured inches.?

The Cowen family were interrupted day and night by visitors asking for information about the lighthouse.

?As the sightseeing traffic became heavier our front lawn became a park and eventually my father had to install a barrier on the main road below to keep any night owls away,? said Mr. Cowen. ?The communication system between the keeper?s homes was quite archaic, perhaps due to the fact that a dial system had not been installed.

?With four keepers plus the lighthouse, one had to wind the phone much the same as an organ grinder with his monkey assistant to play music. The lighthouse was number one and the furthest keepers? lodging several hundred yards away, was five rings. To answer, you would ring at your end and pick it up.

?It seems to me, father enjoyed ringing it the longest to wake the next keeper on duty and of course every household had to listen to the bell even if it wasn?t for them.

?The best time was of course at around 1.30 a.m. every morning without fail and if the keeper wasn?t awakened, it was rung again. Obviously there were no private conversations. Incidentally, our grandfather had the first dial phone on Lighthouse Hill and people came from miles around to use it. I believe it was a party line like most phones in Bermuda at that time.?

Mr. Cowen said the original flagpole for the lighthouse was hauled up Lighthouse Hill by horse and cart by the grandfather of Senator Reginald Burrows.

?It was used as a warning to ships, which might be in danger, by signalling with the international code of flags,? said Mr. Cowen.

?Black flags were also hoisted up that pole to indicate the force of the wind expected to hit the Island.

?Our forefathers relied on the barometer and the pressure was taken on a daily basis but of course with the threat of a hurricane, it was done on an hourly basis. I don?t recall them relying on shark oil for weather prediction. They could tell if we were due for a bad storm by the changes of ocean. At night another system was used to alert the public that hurricanes were approaching ? a small pole with lights perhaps 30 feet high was on the northern side of our home and I don?t know which was lit to indicate expected changes in the weather. There was a chart at the lighthouse for this purpose.?

When Rudolph Cowen left the lighthouse he kept only a few prized possessions.

?After Sir Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman visited the lighthouse my father kept the signatures and proudly displayed them in our home along with his smoking pipes and letter from the Speaker of Bermuda?s House of Assembly that commended him for his long and faithful service,? said Mr. Cowen.

?These were later donated to a display on the third floor of the lighthouse but sadly some years ago they disappeared.?