Qualla: Bell Rock Lighthouse

Bell Rock Lighthouse: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Robertson, CC BY-SA 2.0. For twenty hours of every twenty-four, the Bell Rock is invisible. Twelve feet of cold North Sea covers it at high tide, leaving nothing but the curve of a lighthouse rising out of empty water - 35 metres of interlocking granite, perfectly carved, holding the sea at arm's length for two hundred years. The light is visible from 35 statute miles inland. When Robert Stevenson sailed out here in August 1807 with sixty men, the rock had already wrecked an estimated six ships every winter. By the time he was finished three years later, he had built what would be called one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World on a place that did not exist most of the day.

Read more: Bell Rock Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Derek Robertson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bell Rock Lighthouse: The Abbot's Bell

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TheCreator, Public domain. The rock is also called Inchcape, and the legend explaining its name goes back to the 14th century. The Abbot of Arbroath, the story has it, had a warning bell installed on the reef so that ships running before bad weather would hear it ringing in the swell. A year later a Dutch ...

Read more: Bell Rock Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: TheCreator | Public domain

Bell Rock Lighthouse: Sixty Men on a Drowning Rock

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Stevenson, Public domain. The proposal was shelved at first. Stevenson was twenty-eight, the design was radical, and the cost frightened the East Coast burghs who would have to pay. Then in 1804 a warship was wrecked on the rock and all aboard perished. The outrage in Parliament unblocked everything. Stev...

Read more: Bell Rock Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Robert Stevenson | Public domain

Bell Rock Lighthouse: Granite That Holds the Sea

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Stevenson. 1815-1886, Public domain. Stevenson refused to use black powder; he feared it would shatter the very rock the lighthouse was meant to stand on. So the foundations were cut by hand, with picks. The granite for the tower itself came from Cairngall, quarried over the winter while the rock was unworkable. Eac...

Read more: Bell Rock Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: David Stevenson. 1815-1886 | Public domain

Bell Rock Lighthouse: The Sycamore and the Stevensons

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On the 15th of December 1955, an RAF Bristol Sycamore helicopter on a sea-winching exercise from Leuchars struck the lighthouse's anemometer with its tail rotor and crashed into the sea. The pilot, Flight Sergeant P. A. Beart, was never recovered. The navigator, Sergeant E. F. Ha...

Read more: Bell Rock Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Public domain