A 150-year-old Scottish engineering icon is being celebrated this month.

The Butt of Lewis Lighthouse has been an iconic structure in the Western Isles for a century and a half.

Standing 121ft high and built between 1859 and 1862 by David and Thomas Stevenson, the lighthouse rests in the windiest place in the UK; as confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records.

The conditions are so unforgiving that, when it was being constructed, the materials had to be landed by ship in the sheltered and sandy bay of Port Stoth a couple of hundred yards to the south east.


The Stevensons quoted £4,900 for building the lighthouse and the keepers’ accommodation.

Work was delayed when an initial ship carrying material for its construction was wrecked on the rocks trying to gain the shelter of Port Stoth.

Then a further delay occurred when the only man with the skills needed to construct the 168 step spiral stone staircase went on strike.

The builder eventually won his claim for an extra 1d per day.

In its early days, the lighthouse light was fuelled by vegetable or fish oils.

Between the 1930s to 1971, it had a radio link with the isolated Flannan Isle Lighthouse.

Flannan is known for the mysterious disappearance of three keepers in December 1900.

The Butt of Lewis Lighthouse was automated on 30 March 1998 and is now monitored from the Northern Lighthouse Board's headquarters in Edinburgh.

(IT/GK)