Who Built Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Historic Environment Scotland
Published: 2017-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

On This Rock

Alexander McCall Smith

Bell Rock Lighthouse, 1807

They may be in the most inaccessible places, high white towers with few windows and very little decoration. Yet many of them are lovely to look at; none of them, I think, is ugly. They are lonely buildings, stoic in their isolation. During the day they are asleep – mute sentinels against the movement of the sea – but when night falls they come into their own, reminding us of their presence with powerful bursts of projected light.

I used to have little interest in lighthouses. Like many, I was aware of the Stevensons, the dynasty of engineers responsible for the building of Scotland’s lighthouses, but I knew little about how these extraordinary structures were made, about the lives of the men who did the work or who kept the lights going until automation took over. But then I started to spend more time in Argyll, and lighthouses suddenly became of much greater interest. Having taken up sailing, I have had to try to understand navigation at sea and the role that lighthouses play in that complex subject. I have become one of those who one day might be very glad of the presence of a lighthouse.

The first lighthouse I see on my journeys to Morvern, where I keep a boat, is the lighthouse at Ardgour, close to the point where the Corran Ferry crosses the narrow waist of Loch Linnhe. Then, heading out to sea from Loch Sunart, I see the lighthouse that marks the north-eastern point of Mull, just beyond Tobermory. Half an hour later, rounding the high cliffs of Ardnamurchan Head, one of the most majestic of Scotland’s lighthouses comes into view. There can be few sites as beautiful for a lighthouse anywhere else in the world. Perched on the westernmost edge of mainland Scotland, the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse looks out onto the Hebridean Sea; to the north-west are the small isles; behind them, blue, brooding and magnificent, are the mountains of Skye. The lighthouse itself is in the Egyptian style, with high, pointed recesses at the top of the tower; beside it, a great horn points out towards the open sea across which, thousands of miles away, are the shores of Canada. It is an arresting sight.

There is something rather moving about these lighthouses. They are undeniably beautiful structures, but to me they also speak of loneliness and of a hard history. The sea is very much a part of Scotland’s past, but the story of that engagement is one of hardship, danger and loss. Lighthouses stand for all that; they are an immediate and unmissable reminder of that long relationship. And of all of Scotland’s lighthouses, the Bell Rock, on the other side of the country, in the North Sea, has one of the most interesting and dramatic tales to tell.

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Navigating the coasts of Scotland was always a perilous business – and to some extent still is. Earlier charts, such as they were, were notoriously inaccurate, putting islands, let alone rocks, in the wrong place and leaving large chunks of seabed unsurveyed.

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