The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson

Product Information

The building and monument plans in the collection are generally very large scale plans depicting individual buildings or streets in significant detail. They may be useful in providing a very detailed representation of parts of central Edinburgh from the first few decades of the nineteenth century. He was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2016. [10] Family life [ edit ] 1 Baxters Place, Edinburgh Copy of a plan of the City of Edinburgh drawn and engraved for Gray's Annual Directory, W. & A.K. Johnston (1837) Acc.10706, 379 This is a reread for me, as we're planning a trip to Scotland and I want to familiarize myself with the country from a lot of angles. It's a well-done book, though I can't follow the technical commentary at times, and had to look up terms online.

In 1797 Robert was appointed engineer to the Lighthouse Board and two years later married his stepsister Jean, Thomas Smith’s eldest daughter by an earlier marriage. Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow on 8th June 1772. Robert’s father Alan and his brother Hugh ran a trading company from the city dealing in goods from the West Indies, and it was on a trip to the island of St Kitts that the brothers met their early end, when they contracted and died from a fever. In 1815, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John Barclay, John Playfair and David Brewster. [9] Amongst the untold stories and first-hand accounts by former keepers and their family members is one tale told by a retired fisherman from Shetland who recounted the story of when his aunt, Mary Anderson, became a local casualty of the Second World War after a German bomb was dropped in the vicinity of the Out Skerries Lighthouse on Shetland.

Work on river improvements was an ongoing concern for the Stevensons and plans relating to river works represented 12% of the archive – the joint second most common subject. Although river material covers the whole period, the specific focus changes over time. Plans dating from the first half of the nineteenth century by Robert Stevenson tend to relate primarily to the River Tay. In the second half of the century under the management of David Stevenson, a much wider variety of rivers are represented, including work on the River Clyde. The rivers that are most extensively covered in the archive in general are the Tay (92 plans) and the Clyde (79 plans). Other rivers that are relatively well covered include the Almond Water (24 plans), the Tweed (18 plans), the South Esk (15 plans), the Water of Leith (12 plans), the Don (12 plans), the North Esk (12 plans) and the Conon (10 plans). All featured authors’ books are available via Gallovidia Books of Kirkcudbright from their physical or online shop Join me on a lighthouse tour of Edinburgh. Discover lighthouse engineers, places to visit, museums, restaurants and places to stay. A small number of plans relate to later bridge work by D. & T. Stevenson, including alterations made to North Bridge in Edinburgh in the 1870s. Stevenson died on 12 July 1850, at 1 Baxters Place in Edinburgh. He is buried in the Stevenson family plot in the New Calton Burial Ground.

For the Safety of All by Donald S Murray is available online and in bookstores today (Thursday 29 July). For the Safety of All, written by award-winning Scottish author Donald S Murray and published in partnership by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB), brings to life previously untold stories of former keepers and historic plans and drawings from NLB which have been published for the first time. Though Robert’s mother initially hoped that he would become a minister, he ultimately followed in his step-father’s footsteps and was employed as an assistant to the engineer. In 1791, Robert supervised the building of the Clyde Lighthouse in the River Clyde. Great-grandson D Alan continued the Stevenson tradition. Most notably his personal research paved the way for an Indian lighthouse authority. In 1929, using radio signals, he and his father Charles invented the Talking Beacon.The epic story of how Robert Louis Stevenson’s ancestors built the lighthouses of the Scottish coast against impossible odds. Here is the story of a family who does not seem as if they could exist in our modern world of short attention spans. Here is a family of engineers who spanned four generations and produced a children's story author, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tusitala, the teller of tales. The light on my island was and is Start Point light on the island of Sanday. It was built in Robert Louis's time as an apprentice in the family business: 1806. As far as showcasing Scotland’s locations and wildlife are concerned, it seemed an opportunity to capture something that had not been done before. And, as far as culture and social heritage are concerned, you have the fact that one family built the majority of Scotland’s lighthouses – it’s absolutely incredible. I am not sure Scots know that the Stevensons built so many lighthouses.” Edinburgh is surrounded by several hills including Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat. Edinburgh Castle overlooks the city, and the seat of the Scottish Government at Holyrood is close by. Dioptic lens designed by David A. Stevenson in 1899 for the Inchkeith Lighthouse. It remained in use until 1985 when the last lighthouse keeper was withdrawn and the light was automated.

Reconstruction work on the lighthouse commenced in 1956 and was completed in 1959 when the light was made electric. It is now a self-generating station, power being produced by 3 diesel generators, any one of which is able to carry the full station load. Their service makes a significant contribution to the prevention of accidents and incidents around the coastline, safeguarding not only lives and property, but also protecting the marine environment which is crucial to the economy of Scotland and the Isle of Man. Letter from George Stephenson 28 June 1821 quoted in Stevenson, David (1873). The Life of Robert Stevenson, Civil Engineer. p. 128 . Retrieved 19 July 2015. Sound: A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found". Shelf Awareness. November 2, 2018 . Retrieved 2023-02-10. The book is about exactly what it says in the title. The father, uncles, grandfather and, step great grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson were all pioneering engineers who were responsible for building some of the most remote lighthouses around the Scottish coast.Robert Stevenson was born on 8 June 1772 in Glasgow and died on 12 July 1850. He was the son of Alan Stevenson, a partner in West India House. Engineering skills were in high demand after the Battle of Waterloo, which marked the end of the continental wars, as the focus turned toward improving the country's infrastructure. So Stevenson was kept busy. In addition to his work for the Northern Lighthouse Board, he served as a consulting engineer on many projects, collaborating with other engineers such as John Rennie, Alexander Nimmo, Thomas Telford, William Walker, Archibald Elliot, [7] and William Cubitt. These projects included the construction of roads, bridges, harbours, canals, railways, and aids to river navigation. He designed and oversaw the construction in Glasgow of the Hutcheson Bridge, and in Edinburgh of the Regent Bridge [7] and approaches to it from the east. He also produced a number of designs for canals and railways which were not built, and new and improved designs for bridges, some of which were later implemented by his successors. He invented the movable jib and the balance crane as necessary aids to lighthouse construction, and, as George Stephenson noted, he led the trend toward using malleable rather than cast-iron rails in the construction of railways. [8] We are the lead public body charged with caring for, protecting and promoting the historic environment. We will lead on delivering Scotland’s first strategy for the historic environment, Our Place in Time. The achievements also made their mark on RLS who had a deep interest in his grandfather and wrote about him in Records of a Family of Engineers. Although only a small proportion of the total archive – around 5% - the lighthouse material in the archive covers the whole period in which the Stevensons were operational and includes work by all members of the family. The majority are detailed plans relating to a specific lighthouse project, although some material displays the locations of lighthouses relative to one another and therefore covers a much wider area (MS.5886, 1).

At the age of 30, Stevenson had done well for himself. Raised in poverty, his father died when he was young and he was largely self-taught. He became an engineer for the Northern Lighthouse Board in 1797, inspecting the few warning lights for seafarers that then existed along the Scottish coastline. Lighthouse lantern using reflectors and huge ‘hyperradiant’ lanterns lit by incandescent petroleum vapour, early 1800s

Last on

Robert and his father, Alan, are memorialized on the gravestone of his grandfather, a Glasgow merchant — also named Robert Stevenson - who died in 1764 and was buried in the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral.