ILLUMINATING SCOTLAND
A necklace of light adorns the Scottish coastline. For mariners – on mighty cruise ships or humble fishing craft – these lighthouses are priceless gems of navigation. They are the legacy of four generations of one Edinburgh family whose work spanned 150 years, the Stevensons: the very same family who spawned one of Scotland’s literary greats, Robert Louis Stevenson.
From the late 1700s, it was the Stevensons who dominated the planning and construction of lighthouses, the advances in light technology and the establishment of the service that maintained them.
“Robert Stevenson was without doubt the father of the Scottish lighthouse service,” says Michael Strachan, collections manager at the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses. “The innovations he made in
