Qualla: Skerryvore https://qualla.com/skerryvore 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/b/skerryvore-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Skerryvore https://qualla.com/skerryvore Skerryvore: Introduction https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit W. L. Tarbert, Public domain. On 4 July 1840, the seventh Duke of Argyll laid the first granite block of what would become the tallest lighthouse in Scotland onto a rock that measured 280 square feet at low tide. Around him in every direction, for eight miles, the sea hid more than 130 named hazards - a barrier of metamorphic remnants stretching south-westwards from Skerryvore proper, the Great Skerry, Sgeir Mhor in Gaelic. Between 1790 and 1844, more than thirty ships were known to have been wrecked here. Robert Stevenson had recommended a beacon in 1804. His son Alan, aged thirty when the project was finally entrusted to him, would spend the next six summers giving him one.

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Image: W. L. Tarbert | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Skerryvore: What the Survey Found https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0. Alan Stevenson's painstaking 1834 survey of the reef told him the truth about what the project would demand. There was essentially no choice of location - the single largest area of usable rock at low tide was a patch of 280 square feet. Wave-pressure readings indicated that any ...

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Image: Chris Downer | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-what-the-survey-found.mp3 0:06 2 full Skerryvore: The Barrack That Vanished https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Construction logistics at Skerryvore were a separate engineering problem from the lighthouse itself. The rock lay 11 nautical miles south-west of Tiree, 50 miles from the mainland, and on most days could not be safely landed on at all. The first season, 1838, was spent installing...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-the-barrack-that-vanished.mp3 0:06 3 full Skerryvore: Hynish, the Shore Station https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit James Yardley, CC BY-SA 2.0. On Tiree's south-west corner, the village of Hynish became Skerryvore's mainland base. Granite blocks quarried on Mull were brought to Hynish to be cut and shaped before being shipped out to the reef. Several keepers' cottages were built in 1844 from the same stone, alongside a m...

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Image: James Yardley | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-hynish-the-shore-station.mp3 0:06 4 full Skerryvore: The Tower https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit Alexey Komarov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between April 1839 and June 1840, 4,300 granite blocks were quarried from Mull, shipped to Hynish, hammered and chiselled into shape, and ferried out to the reef. A single block could take 320 worker-hours to complete. The largest was 23 inches square at the base; the smallest wa...

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Image: Alexey Komarov | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-the-tower.mp3 0:06 5 full Skerryvore: The Light, the Fire, the Helipad https://qualla.com/skerryvore/ Photo credit Rob Farrow, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lamp was lit on 1 February 1844 and it shone without interruption for 110 years. Statistics for the 1880s describe Skerryvore as the stormiest part of Scotland - 542 storms in twenty years, totalling 14,211 hours. One keeper lost his hearing for weeks after a lightning strike...

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Image: Rob Farrow | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/b/skerryvore-wp/gf4b-skerryvore-the-light-the-fire-the-helipad.mp3 0:06 6 full