Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 567221
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/567221
Arnish Point Lighthouse, Alan Stevenson, 1852 Stevenson's last lighthouse had the novelty of being the Northern Lighthouse Board's first prefabricated lighthouse, built of iron lined with timber, with keepers' cottages to the north west. It stands sentinel over Stornoway Harbour, built c.1780-5, though Knox observed in 1786 that no quay was being used and that vessels loaded and unloaded on the beach. By the turn of the 18th century a sea wall had been built to allow for the development of North Beach and Cromwell Street as proper thoroughfares. Under the proprietorship of Sir James Matheson, who founded the Stornoway Pier and Harbour Commission in 1865, a new pier by D. T. Stevenson had been built on South Beach by 1851, extended to serve a regular steamer service in the 1880s, and a dock with steam-operated patent slip, stone and concrete quays such as Esplanade Quay, and timber wharves constructed. Castellated ramparts went up along the west side of the harbour to define the policies of Lews Castle. By the turn of the century, a concrete breakwater was completed, while in the 1930s reinforced concrete wharves were built in front of North Beach and Esplanade Quays, and the inner harbour deepened. By c.1940 all original harbour works had been replaced. New Ferry Terminal, Wylie Shanks and Hamilton McWiggan Partnership, 1998 An octagonal landmark suggestive of the old fish mart (1897, demolished 1972) on a large area of reclaimed land which has greatly altered the character of Stornoway's harbour front.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
