Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands

Date 2007

Event ID 882085

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/882085

The Bell Rock is a treacherous reef in the North Sea covered with about 14 ft of water at high tide and about 12 miles offshore from Arbroath. In the past it was notorious for shipwrecks and from 1800 Robert Stevenson, then Smith’s

assistant at the Northern Lighthouse Board, proposed the erection of a stone lighthouse. The eventual construction of the lighthouse built from 1807 to 1811 ranks as one of the world’s greatest civil engineering achievements in the

maritime field.

Initially there were doubts as to the practicability of the project and the Board enlisted the support of the eminent Rennie to obtain the necessary act of parliament for the lighthouse in 1806. Rennie was appointed ‘Chief Engineer’

with Stevenson as ‘assistant engineer to execute the work under his superintendence’. Rennie’s contribution related chiefly to the hydraulic and structural design of the tower, and Stevenson’s to the execution by direct labour,

involving novel temporary works such as the beacon, cranes and railway, and the provision of state-of-the-art lighting.

The tower is 115 ft high, 42 ft diameter at the base tapering to 15 ft diameter at the top and containing some 28 000 cu. ft of four different types of stone weighing some 2100 tons, the bottom 30 ft of which is of solid dovetailed masonry. The cost, which exceeded £60 000, included the erection of a work yard at Arbroath where each course of stone was prepared, cut to shape and assembled on a platform before being shipped out to the rock. At the rock the stones were handled by ingenious cranes and transported over its irregular surface on a cast-iron railway,

much of which still exists. These innovations, including the iron balance crane, forerunner of the modern tower crane, were invented by Francis Watt working under Stevenson’s direction.

In 1824 Stevenson’s classic account of the project was published, which although very detailed, does less than justice to Rennie’s fundamental contribution. In 1848 the sons of both men fuelled a great engineering controversy by publicly claiming that it was their father who had ‘designed and built’ the lighthouse, a matter now better understood with the ready availability of the papers of both families. Its successful accomplishment reflects great credit on both, particularly on Stevenson for overcoming the exceptional difficulties of its execution. The lighthouse, the oldest surviving rock lighthouse in the United Kingdom, has a nominal range of 28 miles and is now fully automated.

R Paxton and J Shipway 2007b

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.

People and Organisations

References