The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson

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Plan showing alterations to the River Oich at Loch Oich to construct the Caledonian Canal (1853). MS.5846, 20 Stevenson served as an apprentice civil engineer to his stepfather, Thomas Smith. He was so successful at it that, at age 19, he was given responsibility for supervising the erection of a lighthouse on Little Cumbrae island in the River Clyde. His next project was overseeing the building of lighthouses on Orkney. While working on these projects, he continued his civil engineering studies: He diligently practised surveying and architectural drawing, and attended maths and physics lectures at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow. Part of a plan & section of an aqueduct & reservoirs for supplying the city of Edinburgh & town & port of Leith with water by Robert Stevenson, Civil Engineer (1824) MS.5849, 98 At Sumburgh Head, Robert had made a detailed survey to identify the best place to build. He chose the top of a cliff and, with a relatively short tower, the light could be seen for 24 miles in 1832. “Some lights never made that distance even in the 20th century,” observes Strachan. The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved 2023-02-09.

TIDESPACE TALKS LAND series starts with a conversation with TIDESPACE Writer In Residence Bella Bathurst. Her acute first hand observations on a contemporary farm, of the significant changes in relationships between one generation to the next and with and within the same land in her book FIELD WORKS - What Land Does To People & What People Do To Land makes a very significant read. These materials depict some coastal towns and villages in Scotland in great detail. They are highly geographically diverse and include some early detailed maps of remote parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For some places, the development of the harbour can be traced over time through the archive as the Stevensons returned to the same location to make improvements and repairs to the earlier work of their ancestors.

The book is about exactly what it says in the title. The father, uncles, grandfather and, step great grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson were all pioneering engineers who were responsible for building some of the most remote lighthouses around the Scottish coast.

Regent Bridge, designed by Archibald Elliot. (Stevenson carried out feasibility study and was in charge of construction) The majority of the plans are of specific harbours and range from town plans showing the outline of the harbour from above to specific cross sections of the design for harbour walls themselves. Larger scale harbour plans tend to be based on Admiralty charts and to show local marine conditions that may influence the proposed harbour. Many of the harbour plans show work in progress and seem to have been created for the use of the engineers’ office, showing alterations to the design, damage done to the work in progress by the sea and proposed repairs. As far as showcasing Scotland’s locations and wildlife are concerned, it seemed an opportunity to capture something that had not been done before. And, as far as culture and social heritage are concerned, you have the fact that one family built the majority of Scotland’s lighthouses – it’s absolutely incredible. I am not sure Scots know that the Stevensons built so many lighthouses.”Throughout his latter teenage years Robert quite literally served his apprenticeship as assistant to his stepfather. Together they worked to supervise and improve the handful of crude coal-fired lighthouses that existed at that time, introducing innovations such as lamps and reflectors. I enjoyed this book much more than I expected, and am now wondering why it languished on my shelves for so many years. But eventually, sanity prevailed, in large part due to the first two generations of Stevensons, who both lobbied for lighthouses and showed that they could be built and then manned by reliable people with decent lights. Then, the book does a great job of explaining the arduous, endless work of the engineers to design and build the lighthouses, as well as bridges, roads, harbors and other works of the nation during the crucial decades. It's unimaginable to me how hard they worked. The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson". Booklist. 1999-09-01 . Retrieved 2023-02-09. Memorials to Stevenson [ edit ] Robert Stevenson is remembered on his grandfather's grave in the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral, though he was buried in Edinburgh Stevenson's gravestone, New Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh

Seasonal by its very nature, Robert successfully combined his practical summer work of constructing lighthouses in the Orkney Islands, whilst devoting the winter months to academic study at Edinburgh University. From Biographical Sketch of the Late Robert Stevenson: Civil Engineer, by Alan Stevenson (1807-1865). In general they are either the most accurate mapping of a specific area that was available at the time or document previous works that had been carried out on a specific place where the Stevensons were working. This is particularly the case for ongoing harbour and river works. Some of these reference plans have been annotated by the Stevensons in relation to the specific project for which they were used, while others are simply unmarked copies.

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Looking to improve the efficiency of his streetlights by experimenting with reflectors, Smith also saw the potential of his innovations for the lighthouses, which were being talked about for the coast of Scotland. In 1798 or 1799, when Robert was about 26, the family moved to a newly built home, 2 Baxters Place, at the head of Leith Walk. [5] For the Safety of All by Donald S Murray is available online and in bookstores today (Thursday 29 July).

The year of 1810 started badly for Robert, losing first his twins and then his youngest daughter to whooping cough. His lighthouse however was nearing completion, and was now attracting many tourists anxious to gaze upon the world’s tallest off-shore lighthouse. The 24 great lanterns that topped the granite stone structure were lit for the first time on 1st February 1811 …one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World. How the family ran the business and became the driving force in lighthouse development is meticulously discussed in a tale that has one rivetted to the seat ... and thankful to be there and not in the Atlantic wastes!Thomas Stevenson was both a lighthouse designer and meteorologist who designed over 30 lighthouses over the course of his life. Between the three brothers, he arguably made the biggest impact in lighthouse engineering, with his meteorological Stevenson screen and lighthouse designs ushering in a new era of lighthouse creation. David Stevenson’s sons carried on the Stevenson lighthouse building name The building and monument plans in the collection are generally very large scale plans depicting individual buildings or streets in significant detail. They may be useful in providing a very detailed representation of parts of central Edinburgh from the first few decades of the nineteenth century. The archive also contains railway plans by other mid-century railway engineers, including James Jardine and Thomas Grainger and John Miller, possibly collected by the Stevensons for reference. In his fifty-year career as engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board, Robert went on to design and construct more than a dozen more lighthouses around the shores of Scotland and the surrounding islands. Innovating and inventing as he went, his civil engineering skills were always in much demand, including ventures into other areas such as bridges, canals, harbours, railways and roads.