History & Heritage

The Sea

Skerryvore Lightouse

Robert Louis Stevenson called it "the noblest of all extant deep sea lights." Skerryvore light is not only an engineering wonder - 138 feet tall and 58,000 cubic feet of granite erected on a tiny rock surrounded by boiling breakers - but a tower of unsurpassed grace and beauty.

An Sgeir Mhòr (the large skerry) lies 11 miles south west of Tiree. It is one of a line of reefs which claimed over 30 ships between 1790 and 1840 at a time when the Clyde was lined by the busiest ports of the British Empire.

Alan Stevenson, the 27 year old son of the chief engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board, was appointed in 1834 to build the lighthouse. He soon realised that only a solid stone structure could withstand the might of the waves when the hardness of the underlying rock (Lewisian gneiss) would not allow foundations. The lowest 26 feet would be entirely solid and the whole structure would weigh 4,308 tons, four times heavier than the Eddystone light.

Work began in 1837 building a dock, workshops and lodgings at Hynish. Grey, locally quarried gneiss was used at first, but work was slow and quarrying was switched to Camas Tuath on the Ross of Mull where the pink granite was easier to shape. The different stone colours can be seen in the buildings around Hynish.

The next year, a six-legged wooden barracks that could sleep 40 men was built in Gourock and assembled on the rock. Twenty one men worked 16 hours a day for five weeks to secure it but their work was in vain as a storm the following winter swept it away.

In 1839 a second, stronger wooden tower, 60 feet tall, was erected on the site and the rock surface was levelled off. No fewer than 296 dynamite charges were needed to remove 2,000 tons of rock, leaving
"in the midst of this torn and fissured surface, a magnificent circular floor, 42 feet in diameter, as smooth as a billiard table. On this floor the whole weight of the tower was intended to rest."

In Hynish 80 stonemasons worked throughout the winter precisely shaping over 4,300 blocks using wooden templates and setting them in place on a circular platform. This allowed them to be set in place on the rock with little adjustment.

Life on the rock was even harder. Rough seas could prevent supplies arriving for seven weeks at a time and occasionally food and fuel were in short supply and tobacco ran out. "Our slumbers, too were at times fearfully interrupted by the sudden pounding of the sea over the roof, the rocking of the house on its pillars and the spurting of water through the seams in the doors", wrote Alan Stevenson in his diary.

In July 1842 the final stone was added to the 97th course. So accurate had been the drawings that the final tower was only one inch taller than expected. Equally impressive was the fact that no-one had lost their life in the five seasons of construction. The whole enterprise had cost £86,977 17s 7d.

The Hynish pier was extended in 1843 to allow the lighthouse vessel to berth. The dock has a tendency to fill up with sand and an ingenious flushing system designed by Stevenson using water from a reservoir up the hill and wooden gates, was used to try to keep it open.

Inside the lighthouse, arrangements were standard: two engine rooms at the bottom, then a workshop, living room, store room, lower and upper bedrooms, fog signal room and at the top a control room.

Three lighthousemen served at a time, working a rota of six weeks on and two weeks off which they spent at their quarters in the Upper Square. They were later transferred to Earraid, near Iona. Communication with Tiree was by a sequence of balls hung out from the lighthouse and monitored by the signalling tower in Hynish.

In winter storms lashed the waves 60 feet up the tower and one young keeper, Soutar, is said to have hanged himself in a cave at Hynish in fear of returning to the rock.

In 1954 a fire gutted the lighthouse requiring a lightship to be anchored nearby until repairs could be effected. In 1994 Skerryvore lighthouse was automated.

The Hynish complex has recently been renovated by the Hebridean Trust.