View from SE of domestic buildings and store rooms Photographic survey 20-Aug-1992. Digital image of B 76292.

Description View from SE of domestic buildings and store rooms Photographic survey 20-Aug-1992. Digital image of B 76292.

Date 1992

Catalogue Number SC 787649

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of B 76292

Scope and Content Domestic buildings and store rooms from south-east, Butt of Lewis Lighthouse, Western Isles This shows the flat-roofed, single-storeyed accommodation, engine house and stores block close by the lighthouse. The whitewashed block has decorative dressings painted in cream, and tall chimneys which once warmed the living accommodation of the keepers and their families. The neatly-trimmed lawn has white stone-edged gravel paths and a cast-iron sundial, of a type issued to many lighthouses. This would be used to monitor the time using the sun if the station clocks were suspected of being faulty. The lighthouse is now remotely monitored from the Northern Lighthouse Board's headquarters in Edinburgh, and is one of the transmitting stations for Differential GPS (Global Positioning System), a satellite-based navigation system available to all mariners. 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