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Summary

Description

David Alan Stevenson, engineer, 1899; George Lawson, Rutherglen, builder; automated 1971. Battered, circular, 3-stage lighthouse tower with single storey, flat-roofed, L-plan keeper's house clasping base at NE corner, sited on steeply falling site. Whitewashed squared rubble with raised margins. Base eaves and blocking courses.

LIGHTHOUSE: 23m high. Tall 1st stage with blocked opening at ground, part-blocked opening approximately half way and window close to top; corbelled walkway giving way to 2nd stage with modern steel railings, row of small glazed portholes and door; narrower pierced cast-iron decking above surmounted by lamp with diagonal astragals and ball-finialled domed cap with weathervane.

INTERIOR: serpentine cast-iron staircase with timber handrail; boarded timber deck with iron girders supported in fluted pilasters and timber-moulded porthole openings.

KEEPER'S HOUSE: principal (S) elevation with 3 windows in advanced section with modern gantry supporting solar panels (see Notes), and recessed entrance bay with door and window. N elevation with door and 3 windows, E elevation with door and window.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: saddleback-coped, snecked roughly squared rubble and random rubble boundaries with pyramidally-coped square-section gatepiers.

Statement of Special Interest

Flannan Lighthouse is now termed a 'Major Automatic Light' since its de-manning on 28 September 1971. It signals by flashing 2 white lights every 30 seconds with a candlepower of 100,000 which can be seen for 20 miles. It has been altered from gas power to solar electric, circa 2000. The structure was built at a cost of ?6,914, including landing places and stairs, on Eilean Mor by George Lawson who also built the dwelling houses for the lightkeepers' wives and families at the shore station at Breasclete, Isle of Lewis (listed separately at category B). Building materials were, of necessity, hauled up the 150 foot cliff face. With no radio communication in 1899, Roderick MacKenzie, gamekeeper on Lewis, was appointed as observer to the light for which service he received ?8 per annum. Little more than a year after the lighthouse began service, on 15th December, 1900, three men disappeared without trace, they were James Ducat Principal Keeper, Thomas Marshall, 2nd Assistant Keeper and Donald McArthur, Occasional Keeper. The disaster, not discovered until 26th December, was most likely caused by a large and unexpected wave which swept them into the sea.

References

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