Qualla: Eilean Glas Lighthouse

Eilean Glas Lighthouse: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1789, on a green spit of rock off the eastern coast of Scalpay, the Northern Lighthouse Board lit one of its first four lights. Eilean Glas was one of them - the first lighthouse anywhere in the Hebrides. For the captains who had been groping along the Minch with charts that were half wish and half rumour, the appearance of a steady beam off Scalpay's eastern shore was nothing short of a revolution. The tower has been replaced and rebuilt since. The location, the work, and the meaning are unchanged: this is where the modern lighting of Scottish waters began.

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Eilean Glas Lighthouse: Four Lights to Open a Coast

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Commissioners of the Northern Lights, established by Act of Parliament in 1786, commissioned four initial lighthouses to begin lighting the long, lethal Scottish coast. Eilean Glas was one of them, alongside Kinnaird Head in Aberdeenshire, Mull of Kintyre, and North Ronaldsay...

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Eilean Glas Lighthouse: The Headland and the Listed Building

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eilean Glas - 'green island' in Gaelic - is a small tied peninsula on the east coast of Scalpay, joined to the main island by a narrow neck of land. You reach it on foot. From the village near Scalpay's bridge, a lane runs southeast and then peters out at Kenavaig; from there a h...

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Eilean Glas Lighthouse: What a First Light Means

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before 1789, ships running the Minch did so by dead reckoning, prayer, and the experience of pilots who had grown up watching the sea from these shores. The number of wrecks along the Outer Hebrides through the 18th century is sobering. Eilean Glas did not end shipwrecks - the ro...

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