Qualla: Barra Head Lighthouse https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Barra Head Lighthouse https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse Barra Head Lighthouse: Introduction https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1836, three years after the lighthouse was lit, Sir Archibald Geikie watched the Atlantic move a forty-two-tonne block of gneiss five feet across the cliff top during a single storm. That is what the wind does at Barra Head. The 58-foot stone tower on the western edge of Berneray stands at the top of a cliff so high that its light, only the height of a four-storey building, sits 208 metres above the sea, the highest focal plane of any lighthouse in the United Kingdom. From here Robert Stevenson's engineers chose to guard the southern entrance to The Minch.

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/gf4e-barra-head-lighthouse-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Barra Head Lighthouse: Robert Stevenson's Outpost https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stevenson, the great Scottish lighthouse engineer and grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, designed dozens of lights around the rocks and headlands of Scotland. Barra Head was among the most demanding. James Smith of Inverness built it. The light was first exhibited on 15 Octob...

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/gf4e-barra-head-lighthouse-robert-stevensons-outpost.mp3 0:06 2 full Barra Head Lighthouse: Halfway Between Two Lights https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Mary and Angus Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mariners running the western seaboard of Scotland needed a marker for the southern mouth of The Minch, the long sound between the Outer Hebrides and the mainland. Barra Head Lighthouse sits roughly halfway between the Eilean Glas light on Scalpay to the north and the Rinns of Isl...

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Image: Mary and Angus Hogg | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/gf4e-barra-head-lighthouse-halfway-between-two-lights.mp3 0:06 3 full Barra Head Lighthouse: Wireless and Radar https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The crofting families of Berneray and Mingulay left between 1910 and 1931. With them went the regular boat traffic that had supplied the lighthouse for nearly a century. Fog and mist made flag and lamp signalling unreliable. By 1925 a wireless link to Castlebay on Barra solved th...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/gf4e-barra-head-lighthouse-wireless-and-radar.mp3 0:06 4 full Barra Head Lighthouse: The Last Keepers Leave https://qualla.com/barra-head-lighthouse/ Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Automation came to Barra Head on 23 October 1980, when the last keepers were withdrawn. The oil-burning light had been converted to incandescent in 1906. Now it would run unattended, an electric flash on an empty island, watched by sensors rather than by men. The keepers' cottage...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/e/barra-head-lighthouse-wp/gf4e-barra-head-lighthouse-the-last-keepers-leave.mp3 0:06 5 full