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Archaeology Notes

Event ID 770409

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/770409

NK15NW 2 11064 57807

Lighthouse [NAT]

OS 1:10m,000 map, 1975.

Rattray Head Lighthouse

(flashing white) [NAT]

OS (GIS) AIB, May 2006.

For associated shore station (NK 1025 5770), see NK15NW 3.

Lighthouse (NK 111 578) and Keepers' Houses (NK 103 577: NK15NW 3). An unusual structure with a massive circular masonry base supporting a circular-section tower 120 ft (37m) high.

J R Hume 1977.

This lighthouse was built by David Alan Stevenson in 1895, about 0.5km off the Aberdeenshire coast. A sturdy granite tower about 16.8m in diameter and 13.4m high forms the base and is sufficiently commodious to house the engine-room for a powerful foghorn; set asymmetrically upon this there is a smaller brick tower, giving a total height of 27.75m.

Construction work was begun in 1892 and the masonry of both portions of the tower was completed in 16 months, spread over three seasons. The lower section comprised 20,000 cu ft of dressed granite blocks (mostly quarried at Rubislaw) and was 46 ft high with an entrance door reached by a 32 ft outside ladder; the upper (with a base diameter of 21 ft as compared with the 55 ft of the other) rises a further 44 ft and is built of enamelled white brick, coped with granite 3 ft thick. Another 25 ft for the lightroom, lantern and dome gives a total height of 120 ft above the rock. The engine room is at the entrance level and the upper tower and siren are planted on a platform known colloquially as the 'quarter deck'. The five-wick paraffin lamp, when first lit in 1895, had a candle-power of 44,000, compared with 6,500 at neighbouring Buchan Ness.

The light was electrified in 1977.

D B Hague and R Christie 1975; R W Munro 1979.

Air photographs: AAS/97/12/G25/10-11 and AAS/97/12/CT.

NMRS, MS/712/29.

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