Keep Yours

Bring home the light you stood beneath.

Everyone who has travelled this country has a lighthouse of their own. The white tower above your first seaside holiday. The light that blinked on over a lonely beach as the sun went down. The one you climbed as a child, or saw from the car on the road to somewhere new. You may not remember the year, but you remember the light. Now it can stand on your table, bringing that memory back every time you use it.

Shown at true scale from approved designs. Woods and finishes vary slightly.

Cape Town Icons Heritage Keepers The Elders Classics Cast in Iron Steel Lace

Start with the lights you know

The Cape Town Icons

The lights on every visitor's route: the V&A Waterfront, the ferry to Robben Island, the walk to Cape Point. All five made at one matching size, so they stand together.

5 mills · 500 of each

The five Cape Town Icons hand turned to one matching size: Mouille Point, Green Point, Cape Point, Robben Island and Old Cape Point. — Shown at true scale. Salt 224 mm, Pepper 234 mm.

SizeOne size for the set: Salt 224 mm, Pepper 234 mm

Mechanism195 mm CrushGrind ceramic

FinishHand turned hard maple, hand painted

Edition500 of each, numbered on the plinth

CAPE TOWN ICONS · CAPE POINTCTI 001 / 500

Old Cape Point and Cape Point Icon mills lying side by side in an open kraft double gift box with a wave printed lining

Each mill carries its own Icon number, from CTI 001 to CTI 500.

The gift pair

Old Cape Point with Cape Point

The old light on the peak and the working light below the cliff: the two towers you see on the same day. Paired side by side in our double gift box, opening from either side onto a wave lining.

Heritage · eight great lights

The great lights of the coast

Some towers simply carry more: Green Point over Table Bay since 1824, Cape Agulhas at the very tip of Africa, Roman Rock alone in the sea off Simon's Town. We make them taller, with more turned detail, and only a hundred of each.

100numbered of each design
300 and 310 mmour tallest mills, on the larger mechanism
One pair per coasta salt and a pepper with the same number

The Cold Atlantic

Slangkoppunt and Green Point

Slangkoppunt stands on the wild Atlantic side of the Cape Peninsula and Green Point looks out over Table Bay, so together they hold the peninsula's Atlantic shore.

See the numbered pair

Where Two Oceans Meet

Roman Rock and Cape Agulhas

Cape Agulhas marks the southern tip of Africa, where two oceans are said to meet, and Roman Rock is the white iron tower alone on a rock off Simon's Town.

See the numbered pair

The Wild Coast

Cape Recife and Bird Island

Both guard Algoa Bay: Cape Recife on its southern tip since 1851, and Bird Island out among the gannets and penguins, where the first light was a wooden pyramid.

See the numbered pair

Green Point KwaZulu-Natal Heritage mill — Pepper

The Warm Indian Coast

Umhlanga Rocks and Green Point

From Durban's northern beaches to the south coast: Umhlanga Rocks beside the Oyster Box Hotel, and the hilltop at Clansthal that throws its red beam across the Aliwal Shoal.

See the numbered pair

Every Heritage mill can also be ordered on its own. A numbered pair carries the same number on both mills.

Keepers · eight lights

For the people who kept the lights

For more than a century, families lived beside these towers, winding the clockwork through the night and rowing out to the wrecks. A Keeper mill honours them, each one designed for its own tower: laminated woods or inlays where the tower allows, hand painted detail where it does not.

250numbered of each design
Designed one by onelaminates and inlays where the tower allows
One pair per coasta salt and a pepper with the same number

The Cold Atlantic

Cape Point and Robben Island

The two lights on every Cape Town visitor's route: the walk up to Cape Point and the ferry to Robben Island.

Cape Point's first keeper, James Coe, earned ten pounds seven shillings a month.

See the numbered pair

Where Two Oceans Meet

Cape St Blaize and Danger Point

Cape St Blaize on the cliffs of Mossel Bay, where Bartolomeu Dias came ashore in 1488, and Danger Point at Gansbaai, where the troopship Birkenhead struck a hidden rock in 1852.

John Armstrong became the first keeper of Cape St Blaize in 1864, chosen for his good character and handed a set of signal flags and a code book.

See the numbered pair

The Wild Coast

Hood Point and Great Fish Point

Hood Point at the Buffalo River mouth in East London, and Great Fish Point on the dunes and fynbos east of Port Alfred, one of the few lights still tended by a keeper.

At Hood Point the clockwork that turned the lens had to be wound three times a night.

See the numbered pair

The Warm Indian Coast

Cape St Lucia and Cape Vidal

Both inside the iSimangaliso Wetland Park: Cape St Lucia among forested dunes, hippo and crocodile, and Cape Vidal beside the reefs where humpback whales and nesting turtles pass.

Joseph Murphy asked for the Cape St Lucia post, stayed thirty years and lived to the age of one hundred.

See the numbered pair

Every Keeper mill can also be ordered on its own. A numbered pair carries the same number on both mills.

The Elders

Six lights that went dark

50of each Elder. When the fiftieth is sold, that Elder is decommissioned for good.

In South Africa our Elders are spiritual beacons and recognised as the keepers of wisdom, the ones that guide us and keep us safe. Our 6 lighthouse elders served the same purpose.

Retired, replaced, or pulled down for war, they are the forefathers of the lights you can visit today, and we honour them apart from the tiers. They are made on the large 260 mm mechanism, each designed for its own tower, and they are the rarest mills we make.

Edition of 50

1842 to 1908

Mouille Point

Built because the Green Point light could not be seen from the anchorage. It stood 2 km closer in, beside a sea wall the Dutch began and never finished.

Went dark: 15 April 1908, when the breakwater light took over
Today: Its stout base survives at Granger Bay
Heir: Green Point, still shining

Edition of 50

1860 to 1919

Old Cape Point

Set 262 m up on the peak, so high the cloud hid it for hundreds of hours a year. Its keeper ran down the cliff in the dark the night the Lusitania struck.

Went dark: When the new light was lit lower on the cliff
Today: Still on the peak, where every visitor climbs
Heir: Cape Point

Edition of 50

1861 to 1973

Hill

Raised beside the pyramid Sir Rufane Donkin built for his wife Elizabeth. In 1921 it became the first South African lighthouse to talk to another by wireless.

Went dark: Retired in 1973
Today: A museum on the Donkin Reserve, Gqeberha
Watched over: Bird Island, by pigeon and then by radio

Edition of 50

1867 to 1941

Bluff

Durban campaigned fifteen years for it and closed the shops the day it opened. The first light on the Natal coast, it gave up its ridge to the guns of war.

Went dark: Demolished June 1941
Today: Only the ridge, and the story
Made of: Cast iron

Edition of 50

1860 to 1895

Castle Point

East London's first lighthouse was made of wood, on rocks so close to the Buffalo River mouth that the sea ran all round it at high tide.

Went dark: 4 June 1895
Today: Gone, pulled down in 1929
Heir: Hood Point

Edition of 50

1852 to 1873

Old Bird Island

A wooden pyramid in Algoa Bay with two lights lined up on the rocks that wrecked the Doddington. Salt air and seabirds ate through its iron bolts.

Went dark: 1 May 1873
Today: Gone, replaced in island stone
Heir: Bird Island

Two generations

The Elder and its heir, boxed together

The first light and the one that carries it on today, side by side in one box. Both are made as matching Icons on the 195 mm mechanism, so the old and the new stand level on your table. 500 sets of each, every mill numbered. The full size Elders stay a separate collector edition of 50.

Set I

Mouille Point with Green Point

Icon pair · 500 sets

Set II

Old Cape Point with Cape Point

Icon pair · 500 sets

Set III

Castle Point with Hood Point

Icon pair · 500 sets

Set IV

Old Bird Island with Bird Island

Icon pair · 500 sets

Meet the Elders on the map

Classics · thirty lights

Every tower in its true colours

The everyday table mill, and the widest choice. Hand turned from hard maple and hand painted in the colours each tower wears on the coast, so the light you know is the one on your table. Find yours by the stretch of shore you love.

1 000numbered of each design
224 and 234 mmsalt and pepper
30 lightson all four coasts

See all thirty Classics

Not sure which is yours? Search any coastal town on the map.

By how they were built

Iron and steel

Two ways the coast was lit, and two very different looking mills.

Cast in Iron

Cast in British foundries, shipped out in numbered plates and bolted together on rocks, islands and cliffs. These towers were the flat pack of the Victorian age, and most still stand. Our mills carry the same idea in wood: turned, painted by hand and topped in stainless steel or brass, made to last.

8 mills

Heritage · 100

SlangkoppuntTallest cast iron · 33 m

Heritage · 100

Roman RockBuilt in the sea · 1861

Classic · 1 000

Dassen IslandChance Brothers · 1893

Heritage · 100

Green Point KZNChance Brothers · 1905

Keeper · 250

Cape St LuciaForest tower

Classic · 1 000

Port ShepstoneMoved from Scottburgh

Elder · 50

Old Cape PointGreenwich foundry · 1860

Elder · 50

BluffDurban · 1867

Steel Lace

The open frame towers of the twentieth century, where the light sits high on a web of steel. On our mills every strut of that lattice is painted by hand onto the turned wood, and the bare timber between the struts reads as open sky.

9 mills

Classic · 1 000

Port NollothDiamond coast

Classic · 1 000

Cape St MartinSt Helena Bay

Classic · 1 000

Quoin PointAgulhas coast

Classic · 1 000

Cape InfantaBreede River mouth

Classic · 1 000

Cape SealHighest light in SA

Classic · 1 000

Cape MorganWild Coast

Classic · 1 000

MbasheRed dome

Classic · 1 000

DealGqeberha

Classic · 1 000

Ifafa BeachSouth coast

The Full Set

One of every lighthouse

19Full Sets for sale, numbered FS 02 to FS 20. FS 01 stays in our workshop.

A Full Set is one mill of every design in the collection: the 30 Classics, the 8 Keepers, the 8 Heritage mills and the 6 Elders, 52 mills in all. Every mill carries the same Full Set number, so FS 07 is number 07 in every edition.

R124,525, which is 15% off the list price of R146,500. We deliver it in six tranches, coast by coast, from the end of February to the end of July 2027, each with its Papers of Provenance.

See the Full Set in the shop

Ready, or made for you

First mills are on the lathe now.

From 1 November 2026, some lighthouses are ready on the shelf. If yours is not, pre order it and take 10% off for the wait, for a limited time only: we make it in 3 weeks, then send it to you. Names and logos can be engraved: see how to make it yours.

info@lighthousemills.co.za