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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 610115
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/610115
The Isle of May at the entrance to the Firth of Forth, about one mile long and one-third of a mile wide, for centuries resulted in the shipwrecks of many vessels plying to and from the Forth ports, a situation which led to the erection there of the first lighthouse in Scotland. It was privately financed and owned in the first instance by the Cunningham family of Barns in East Lothian, and later, by the Scotstarvit family.
Following the granting of a patent by Charles I, a masonry tower 40 ft high and about 25 ft square was erected in 1635. It was vaulted at the top to support a flat flagstone roof on which an iron chauffer was placed
containing a coal fire. ‘But its appearance was ever varying, now shooting up in high flames, again enveloped
in dense smoke, and never well seen when most required.’ The fire consumed up to 400 tons of coal per annum all of which had to be carried up 160 ft from the shore and then hoisted to the top of the tower...
This system operated until the erection of the present lighthouse in 1816, when it was intended to be demolished. But, following a plea by Sir Walter Scott to Robert Stevenson, when visiting the Isle in 1815, it was reprieved and ‘ruined a la picturesque’ to half its original height and castellated to serve as a refuge for fishermen and pilots of the Forth.
The original coal-fired light was replaced in 1816 by the present architecturally imposing lighthouse (NT69NE 8.00 ) reminiscent of a small castle.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
