The Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse and Other Light Reviews

or many years, before any official proposals were made, a crofter- shepherd living, possibly at Ballinamoil or

F Ballemakilchonnele, near the present lighthouse site, had kept a light in his window as a guide to shipping. Even
though The Mull was cleared for a sheep-walk about 1780, one or two houses were still occupied by the
shepherds.

The Customs Commissioners in Edinburgh had asked the Collector of Customs in Campbeltown to prepare a report
on the feasability and likely costs of building and operating a lighthouse on The Mull of Kintyre sometime around the
winter of 1785/1786 - Already in existence were the Tay Lights and a light on the island of May, in the Firth of Forth
but the only light in the Clyde area was a coal-fired light which had been lit on the Wee Cumbrae in about 1750.

On March 1st, 1786 the Campbeltown Collector duly replied, “We beg leave to observe that a lighthouse on The Mull
of Kintyre would certainly be of the greatest advantage to navigation . . . for ships coming from America and The
West Indies come frequently between the coast of Ireland and the island of Islay and The Mull of Islay is often
mistaken for The Mull of Kintyre by which frequent shipwrecks happen.

“The Mull of Kintyre is so very high that a lighthouse built anywhere on the summit of it would be covered with fog
and clouds . . . but, we are told of a very proper height . . . where it might be built with good advantage . . . with
regard to this as well as the expense, we are very ignorant ourselves and can find no person here knowing enough to be
capable of giving us any satisfaction.”

Five months later, on August 1st, 1786 there was a meeting of “Commissioners or Trustees for erecting four
lighthouses in the northern parts of Great Britain, one at Kinnairds Head, in the County of Aberdeen, one on the
island of North Ronilsha (North Ronaldsay), in the Orkneys, one on the point of Scalpa, in the island of Herries
(Harris) and a fourth on The Mull of Kintyre.” The first light built was in Kinnaird Head’s Tower Castle in 1787.

By January 22, 1787, The Board had received, letters from The Duke ofArgyll, from his Chamberlain and the
Provost of Campbeltown in response to their enquiries about leasing the necessary two acres of ground for the new
lighthouse, keeper’s house and garden and the meeting that day resolved that “The Provost of Campbeltown be
empowered as one of the Trustees and requested to take the proper steps relative to erecting a proper lighthouse and to
procure estimates and provide materials for that purpose and to inform him that the precise dimensions and a plan will
be sent to him.”

The Board too appointed Thomas Smith to be its first engineer and, to give him instruction in the principles of
constructing and operating lighthouses, they paid 50 guineas to Ezekiel Walker, who had just finished building the light
at Lyme Regis.

In 1786, Thomas Smith had married the widowed mother of the then 14-year old Robert Stevenson and the young
Robert would later, in 1796, succeed his step-father as the Northern Lighthouse Board’s chief engineer.

A charter for the necessary ground was duly agreed with The Duke of Argyll “for payment of 5/- per annum on
condition of the ground being enclosed” as the Duke was in the process of turning the Mull into a ‘sheep-walk’, “and
that the light keeper shall keep no dog.” This last part of the agreement was to cause protest later on.

On August 30, 1787, The Board were informed by Campbeltown’s Provost Maxwell that “no person in the county
could be got for building the lighthouse” and he “proposed to advertise for a contractor - which he had not yet done
as no stranger could be supposed to contract for building in a place so difficult of access and so remote unless at a very
extravagant sum and it was thought it would be better to send workmen from Edinburgh to execute the works.”

Shortly after The Board’s meeting in August, three stone-masons, George Shields, who later erected the lighthouse on
Pladda, as charge-hand and John and William Purdie as his assistants, were duly sent down from Edinburgh - George
Shields was paid 4/2d per day, his assistants 3/- each per day.

The stores and materials, landed six miles away from the site, had to be transported on horse-back, the loads being
limited to no more than a hundredweight per animal and each animal restricted to making but a single trip each day.

An obituary recording the death of Matthew Harvey, son of the first keeper, noted the difficulties of getting to the
lighthouse site, “It is over 16 miles from Campbeltown and the last five of these miles are over a mountain without a
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track. You had to steer for a particular ‘gap’ in the mountain and would lose sight of it now and then as you rose and
descended the hilly ground that lay between.” - The name, ‘The Gap’, is now shown on maps.

Despite the physical difficulties of bringing in supplies, the Trustees had a letter from Campbeltown’s Provost Maxwell
on November 16, 1787, just three months after the three masons had arrived from Edinburgh, stating that the
lighthouse was ready for the lantern to be hung.

The Commissioners resolved “to delay hanging the lantern till the spring, due to the shortage of the days and the
expenses of taking other tradesmen from Edinburgh.” The Board’s minute of their meeting on March 6, 1788 noted
that Thomas Smith, their engineer, had been ordered to “go west to put on the lantern immediately.”

The lantern was finished and ready for use in June but Smith noted there were still other works to complete and “that
the ground allotted for the keeper, except for a very small spot, can be of no manner of use to him as nothing will
grow there and it is not worth enclosing. However, there is tolerable good ground at a small distance which would be
of great use.”

A keeper had now to be appointed and Smith wrote “that the person to be employed should be fixed on immediately
and measures taken for his subsistence during the winter as he will be totally removed from society and must have time to win the
peats.” Smith too highlighted the need for a wall to be built between the lighthouse and the sea “to prevent the keeper or any
of his family being blown over by strong winds.”

The Board’s first keeper, formerly master of the “King George”, a brig, trading out of Greenock, was William Harvey,
born in 1738. He is first mentioned by name in The Board’s minutes for June 10, 1792 , when it was noted that an
order was for £30 16s 8d was drawn to “Wm. Harvey, Keeper at Cantyre, his salary, somewhat belated and more
than a year overdue, up to March 1791.

A year later, in 1793, Thomas Smith, having carried out two inspections of the light, first on June 11th and then on
September 6th, wrote in his report, “This keeper is much molested by the Moil Company who insist that he shall not
keep a dog or a gun, which I think is necessary as the place is infested with wild cats which are dangerous and,
notwithstanding the fences around his ground, the goats and also the sheep, belonging to the same company, leap over
the walls to destroy his crop and, without he is allowed a dog to protect his own ground, it will be of little use to him.

“They seem to treat the man as if he were a thief or a sheep-stealer and insist upon it that they have a right to prevent
him from keeping a dog or a gun by the agreement with The Duke of Argyll. For my own part, I think him an honest
man and that he would not make any improper use either of his dog or gun. If he cannot be trusted with these he
surely ought not to have such an important trust as the lighthouse.”

The Commissioners minute states that they wrote to ‘the doers’ of The Duke and the question does not reappear,
presumably William Harvey getting his dog and gun. He died in November 1800 and his wife, assisted by their son,
Matthew, was kept on as keeper - A note in the 1802 minutes resolving “to continue the widow and the son of the late
keeper of the lighthouse on The Mull of Cantyre as joint keepers thereof and to authorise The Clerk to relinquish The
Board’s claim of £10 10s which had, by mistake, been overpaid to the late keeper by the agent at Campbeltown.” In
1807, it was resolved that each keeper should keep an assistant and the keeper’s salary was therefore raised, by £10 per
annum.

Matthew Harvey became and then remained Principal Lighthouse Keeper until 1843. Matthew and his father, William,
had given 55 continuous years of service at The Mull and now, in 1845, just two years after his father’s retirement,
young Matthew, the grandson, also entered the service. He served till 1892, eleven of his years, between 1854 and
1865, being too at The Mull.

In 1820, Robert Stevenson, responsible for the invention of intermittent and flashing lights, returned to The Mull
Lighthouse to carry out further works.

Lighthouse stores were carried on horseback from Southend or Carskiey until some time between 1830 and 1840 when
The Commissioners built a bridle track, 4’ 3” wide, from Glemanuilt to the lighthouse. In 1841, McNeill of Carskiey
conveyed ground for a store at Carskiey and then, in 1848, granted The Commissioners a right of access to
Glemanuilt so that a proper road could be built. The route was used until 1929 when the contract for bringing in the
stores was given to John McLean.

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Matthew senior, then almost 91, died in 1867. Like his father, he had been a man of upright and hard-working
character. An anecdote from his obituary illustrates the man and the toughness of his life at The Mull. “The road had
been finished, with its bridges over deep ravines and its dry, firm footing, over morasses and quagmires, but, it had
not been formally opened and the stores were still being carried along the winding sheep tracks. Matthew was asked why he
wasn’t using the road ? The Commissioners haven’t given orders that, he replied.”

While the lighthouse keepers’ cottages were built around 1857, other improvements were made to the light in the
ensuing years, the foghorn being installed in 1876 and the light characteristics being changed from ‘fixed’ to ‘flashing’
in 1906 when too the light’s power was increased from 8,000 to 281,000 candle-power. The light was electrified in
1976, the output being further increased to 1,575,000 candle-power and then, in 1996, the installation finally
automated.

Towards the coast of Kintyre, small craft, fishing boats and the old puffers often chose to avoid the worst effects of
the tides by passing close to the cliffs under The Mull’s lighthouse. The pinnacle rock formation below the lighthouse
has long been affectionately referred to as ‘The Dug’s Lugs’ or, in English, ‘The Dog’s Ears’ !

In 1790, two years after The Mull Lighthouse was completed, a second useful navigating mark, A’Chleit Church, on
the point between Tayinloan and Muasdale, too was completed, its building begun in 1787 by one Thomas Cairns of
Campbeltown.

. . . . . and Other Light Reviews

iven Stevenson’s building of the lighthouse on Pladda, at the south end of Arran in 1800. To avoid confusion

G with the nearby light on the Mull of Kintyre, a second lower light-tower was added in the 1820’s making
Pladda a ‘double-light’ until 1901 when The Northern Lighthouse Board introduced ‘group flashing’.
Campbeltown Town Council, at their own expense, placed, a Stevenson light in a little tower at Kilkerran
Cottage, opposite the cemetery on the south side of Campbeltown Loch. This served from 1822 till about 1854 when
Davaar lighthouse came into operation.

Calls had been made for the provision of a light on Sanda Island as far back as 1825, when the “Christiana” of Glasgow,
outward bound in bad weather, had been lost on Paterson’s Rock. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Trinity House that
was making the pleas and they wanted the light on The Mull of Kintyre closed down and moved to Sanda ! The move
was of course rejected by The Northen Lighthouse Board who instead offered to mark Paterson’s Rock with a beacon.

It was, in these days, not yet possible to light beacons - The first lightship to appear on our coasts was moored in
The Thames in 1732 and too there the first lighted buoys would appear around 1880 though they were not really
practicable till about 1912 when Gustaf Dalén, a Swede, found a way of dissolving acetylene.

The first recorded revolving lights appeared in Sweden, in 1781 and the following year, 1782, P. A. Argand, a Swiss
engineer, invented a smokeless oil lamp, using a hollow wick with a column of air passing through it, the whole being
enclosed in a glass chimney. This type of wick lamp was to be replaced when, in 1901, A. Kitson invented an burner
which vaporised the oil under pressure, like a blow-lamp.

With the number of wrecks continuing around Sanda continuing to rise, the decision was taken to build a new
lighthouse on Ship Rock, the design incorporating a stone tower in three steps, not against the face of the rock. It is
the only light of its kind in Scotland.

In 1850, the same year that Robert’s grandson, Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, was born to his youngest son
Thomas, his eldest son, Alan, began work on Sanda. The men were lodged with the Ritchie family who had taken up
tenancy in 1845. On Boxing Day, Thursday December 26, 1850, the Ritchie family were hit by tragedy. Alexander
and his 21-year old son, William, were both drowned within sight of their home as they returned from church in
Southend.

Just as the light on The Mull of Kintyre had to be set low down to avoid being obscured by mist, Rathlin Island’s West
Light, known sometimes as The Bull, its building begun in 1912 and first lit in 1916, had to be built half-way down a
400-foot cliff. Scott, the architect, got over the problem by constructing an enormous concrete glacis, set at a 45°
angle on the cliff-face. The keeper’s house is entered through ‘the attic’ and six storeys down one comes to the
lighthouse’s lantern ! It cost some £400,000 before it was eventually fully finished in 1919 - Skerryvore, a ‘rock’
light, built in 1835-44, cost £89,000. Ailsa Craig’s lighthouse, on the North Foreland, was built in 1869.