Qualla: Shillay, Monach Islands

Shillay, Monach Islands: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. A lighthouse keeper carved two words into a stone at Shillay: 'Eternity Oh Eternity.' No one knows precisely when, or who. The stone was later removed from the lighthouse and built into the wall of the church at Paible on North Uist, where it can still be seen. Whether the carving referred to the small island just to the south of Shillay - called Eilean Siorraidh, the Island of Eternity - or to the keeper's own state of mind during long nights on this Atlantic outpost is unrecorded. The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shillay, Monach Islands: Seal Island

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Otter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shillay - in Scottish Gaelic Siolaigh or Seilaigh - takes its name from the Old Norse selrey, meaning Seal Island. The Norse who named these islands had reached the Hebrides by sea, and they named what they saw: the seals hauling out on the rocks, in numbers large enough that the...

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Image: Otter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Shillay, Monach Islands: A Confused Geography

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Monach Islands present a small puzzle. Ceann Iar, one of the larger islands in the group, has a name that literally means 'western headland' - and yet Shillay, not Ceann Iar, is the westernmost island. The naming presumably reflects a moment when Shillay was not yet recognise...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shillay, Monach Islands: The Stevensons and the Red Brick Tower

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Shillay lighthouse was built in 1864 by David and Thomas Stevenson - the second generation of the Stevenson lighthouse dynasty that lit the dangerous Scottish coast. Thomas Stevenson's son was Robert Louis Stevenson, the novelist, who failed at engineering but absorbed the fa...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shillay, Monach Islands: An Aluminium Mistake, and a Return

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1997 an automated aluminium light was installed at Shillay, intended as a permanent replacement for the old Stevenson tower. It did not work well. The light was too low, the visibility too short, the maintenance more expensive than expected. By 2005 it had become clear that th...

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0