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Lewis, Butt Of Lewis Lighthouse
Lighthouse (19th Century)
Site Name Lewis, Butt Of Lewis Lighthouse
Classification Lighthouse (19th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Eoropie, Lighthouse; North Minch; Atlantic
Canmore ID 4424
Site Number NB56NW 8
NGR NB 51970 66483
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/4424
- Council Western Isles
- Parish Barvas
- Former Region Western Isles Islands Area
- Former District Western Isles
- Former County Ross And Cromarty
Butt of Lewis Lighthouse, D. & T. Stevenson, 1862 A solitary, lantern-lit column marking the northernmost limit of the Long Island, this is one of several lighthouses that punctuate the Hebridean coast from spray-swept cliffs and skerries. Mounted on an awesome platform of serrated gneiss, it is unusually tall and built of red brick, like that on the Monach Isles. It was the last to succumb to automation (in 1997). The assistant keepers' accommodation is a two-storey range, taking the less usual form of one house above another, with an external stair, as at Corran Ferry. Keeper's cottage (also flat-roofed) in long, detached range alongside boiler and engine houses; stables opposite.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
NB56NW 8 51970 66483
Butt of Lewis Lighthouse [NAT]
OS 1:10,000 map, 1992.
EXTERNAL REFERENCE:
Scottish Record Office
Butt of Lewis. Letter concerning one.
1817 GD46/17/Vol 48
(Undated) information in NMRS.
(Location cited as NB 519 660). Butt of Lewis Lighthouse. Built c. 1863 by engineers D and T Stevenson. A tall red-brick tower and a shorter fog-horn tower, both circular in section, tapering. The ancillary buildings are of the normal flat-roofed type; the keepers' houses are, unusually, tapering.
J R Hume 1977.
This lighthouse was first lit in 1862. It was fitted with an experimental W/T system soon after 1907, machine-gunned by German aircraft in November 1940 and electrified in 1976. It also monitors the Flannan Isles light.
R W Munro 1979.
This island lighthouse is situated at the Northernmost end of the Hebrides, and hence defines the Western side of the northern entrance to the Minch. It was built by D A Stevenson in 1862, forming part of the major scheme (involving the construction of no fewer than 29 lighthouses) that was carried out by D and T Stevenson between 1854 and 1878.
The lighthouse was electrified in 1976 and automated in 1998, being one of the last three Scottish lighthouses to be so converted.
Extensive records [location not cited] survive regarding the construction of this lighthouse.
Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 26 August 2008.
R W Munro 1979; K Allardyce and E M Hood 1986; K Allardyce 1998; S Krauskopf 2001.
