Detail of lighthouse entrance Photographic survey 20-Aug-1992. Digital image of B 76289 CN.

Description Detail of lighthouse entrance Photographic survey 20-Aug-1992. Digital image of B 76289 CN.

Date 1992

Catalogue Number SC 787642

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of B 76289 CN

Scope and Content Detail of entrance, Butt of Lewis Lighthouse, Western Isles This shows the doorway to the lighthouse with its cream-painted stone dressings contrasting with the red brickwork laid in a pattern known as 'English garden wall bond'. This method of bricklaying uses a 'header' (bricks laid with their ends to the outside of the wall) course between every third course of 'stretchers' (bricks laid lengthwise). Above the doorway is a relieving arch which spreads the pressure from the tower's great weight away from the lintel below. The present equipment in the tower was fitted in 1905, and flashed every 20 seconds. Before this apparatus, the light was probably 'fixed', giving a constant beam. The lamp was originally powered by vegetable or fish oil, before being converted to paraffin in 1869, and electrified in 1976. Butt of Lewis Lighthouse was built in 1862 to designs by engineers David (1815-86) and Thomas Stevenson (1818-87) and stands on the northernmost tip of the Isle of Lewis, officially the windiest spot in the UK. The 37m-high red brick tower is surmounted by a black domed lantern, and has a light which flashes white every five seconds, with a range of 40km over the Atlantic Ocean. The keepers lived in white-painted, flat-roofed cottages around the tower until the complex was automated in 1998. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap