The Lighthouse Stevensons

The Lighthouse Stevensons

As the author of Kidnapped and Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson was known and celebrated across the world, but his family – who pioneered the building of lighthouses across Scotland – were the people he admired. He once wrote with pride: “Whenever I smell saltwater, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors.”

This new documentary charts the work of the Lighthouse Stevensons over the course of generations from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, creating lighthouses on some of the most storm-lashed and inaccessible outcrops of Scotland imaginable. Stunning aerial photography of many of the locations demonstrates that creating these buildings would be a difficult job now, never mind then.

The family tradition was started with Edinburgh man Thomas Smith, who installed his first light on Kinnaird Castle, near Fraserburgh, in 1787. He passed the baton on to his son-in-law (and stepson) Robert Stevenson, who founded a dynasty of lighthouse engineers including sons, Allan, David and Thomas (father of RLS), and in turn David’s sons David Alan and Charles and finally Charles’s son, David Alan.

Lighthouse aficionados prepare to celebrate the 200 years since the first light was lit on the famous Bell Rock Lighthouse, near Arbroath, on February 1, 1811.
Built before the age of steam, on a rock that was submerged much of the day, the Bell Rock light was an engineering masterpiece and the wonder of the age. Regarded as the first major project for Robert Stevenson (in tandem with John Rennie), it is a fitting backdrop in the documentary for an interview with author of The Lighthouse Stevensons, Bella Bathurst.

Also featured is Fair Isle South lighthouse, which was the last in Scotland to be automated in 1998, with interviews from the keepers serving at that time – fourth generation keeper Angus Hutchison, who now lives in Stromness, Orkney, and Bill Gault, who lives in Strichen, near Fraserburgh. Another interviewee is Jean Barbour, now of Bridge of Don– whose mother was killed in one of the WW2 attacks on Fair Isle South lighthouse, where her father was a keeper. She was a baby at the time but she survived the attack.

Other keepers featured - Ian Duff, of Oban, who has amassed a collection of lighthouse books, pictures and paraphernalia and Hector Lamont and his wife Esther, of Campbeltown, William Frazer, of Ballantrae, and Jimmy Oliver, who is now Senior Guide at The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, Fraserburgh.
Says Bill Gault: “We’ll never know the countless lives that sailed past … because that light was there and because guys like me were prepared to take on the task of being there.” And Angus Hutchison says: “I feel extremely proud to have been a member of such an elite band of brothers and that’s what they were to me throughout my time in the lighthouse service and I just regard it as a life well spent.”