Bell Rock Lighthouse

Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

The Bell Rock Lighthouse stands on the Inchcape Rock, a reef off the east coast of Scotland that lies beneath the sea at high tide and had wrecked countless ships. Local legend told of a bell once placed on the reef by an abbot of Arbroath, later immortalised in Robert Southey’s poem. After a storm destroyed many vessels in 1799, the Northern Lighthouse Board commissioned Robert Stevenson to build a lighthouse there. Working from 1807 to 1810, with the engineer John Rennie acting as a consultant, the builders could labour on the rock for only a few hours each tide, living on a ship and later on a timber beacon, and dovetailing granite and sandstone blocks into a tower about thirty-five metres tall. It was first lit in February 1811 and is widely described as the oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse in the world. It has been automated since 1988 and remains an active aid to navigation managed by the Northern Lighthouse Board. Visitors cannot normally land. The best way to understand the achievement is through the Signal Tower Museum in Arbroath, the former shore station that relayed messages to the lighthouse keepers, and by looking out to sea, where the tower is sometimes visible on clear days. Boat trips have occurred occasionally, but they are not a regular public service and depend on weather and tide, so plan to appreciate it from the shore or through the museum.