Archaeology Notes

Event ID 642408

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/642408

HU27NW 14.00 20580 78451

Eshaness Lighthouse [NAT]

OS 1:1000 map, 1973.

HU27NW 14.01 HU 20595 78442 Lighthouse Keeper's House and Sundial

(Location cited as HU 206 785). Esha Ness Lighthouse, established 1929 by engineer D Alan Stevenson. A square-section tower tapering with an octagonal lantern and rising from a block of single-storey flat-roofed houses and ancillary buildings. Now unmanned.

J R Hume 1977.

This shore lighthouse marks the Western extremity of the Esha Ness or Eshaness peninsula [name centred HU 22 79] on the exposed W (Atlantic) coast of Shetland. The 37ft [11.3m]-high tower stands on a cliff 200ft [60m] high; the Ve Skerries [name: HU 10 68] lie offshore. It is historically significant as being the last lighthouse to be built by a member of the Stevenson family.

A temporary light of sufficient power to give warning of the Ve Skerries (8.5 miles offshore) was erected on the Eshaness peninsula in 1915. It took the form of an iron tower which housed a lantern and an acetylene generating plant, and was taken down after the First World War.

The present (permanent) lighthouse was built in 1929 by D A Stevenson, and, unsually, has a house for only a single keeper. In 1974, the power of the lantern was increased to 46,000cp, the lighthouse was automated, and the house sold into private residential use.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 28 March 2008.

R W Munro 1979; K Allardyce and E M Hood 1986; S Krauskopf 2001; S Krauskopf 2003.