Archaeology Notes

Event ID 672686

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/672686

NL93NE 8.00 98528 39183

(NL 9853 3918) Old Signalling Tower (NAT)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1976).

For (associated) Skerryvore Lighthouse (NL 840 263), see NL82NW 1.

See also Hynish harbour (NL93NE 9).

For (related and successor) establishment at Erraid (Earraid), Mull (NM 297 203), see NM22SE 61.

This shore establishment was established in 1836-8 to serve the construction and use of Skerryvore lighthouse (NL82NW 1); the quarries being opened and the pier being constructed before a 150-strong colony was established. About £13,000 was spent at Hynish and the establishment was used for about fifty years before it was abandoned in favour of Earraid (Erraid), Mull (NM22SE 61).

R W Munro 1979.

(Location cited as NL 98 39). Harbour and lighthouse establishment, Hynish, built 1837-43 by engineer Alan Stevenson. A masonry dock and pier, with crane for boom and the remains of a scouring system. There is a terraced pair of plain two-storey buildings, designed for workes, a range of one-storey ancillary buildings, a signal tower about 30ft (9.3m) high and a single-storey block of flat-roofed keepers' cottages. Nearby are quarry workings associated with the construction of Skerryvore Lighthouse.

J R Hume 1977.

This signal-tower was built in 1839 to provide semaphore communication with Skerryvore Lighthouse (NL82NW 1). It measures 5.4 m in diameter and rises through two main storeys to an overall height of about 9.3 m above a corbel-course and parapet. The walls, which are 1.2 m in thickness at base, are constructed of coursed rubble masonry of local origin set above a granite plinth. The entrance is in the NE sector, and the principal observation-chamber on the upper floor incorporates two ranges of iron-framed windows facing E and S towards the harbour and Skerryvore Lighthouse respectively.

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1973.