Bell Rock Lighthouse
| Bell Rock Lighthouse | ||
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| Place: | Arbroath , Scotland | |
| Location: | 11 miles off the coast of Angus | |
| Geographical location: | 56 ° 26 '3 " N , 2 ° 23' 14" W | |
| Fire height : | 35.3 | |
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| Identifier : | Light beam every 5 seconds | |
| Scope knows: | 18 nm (33.3 km ) | |
| Construction time: | 1807-1810 | |
The Bell Rock lighthouse is the oldest surviving lighthouse that stands on a rock in the North Sea . It is located 16.2 km southeast of the coast near Arbroath in the Scottish administrative region of Angus on the submarine rock Bell Rock. The rock was the site of numerous ship accidents as it is on the shipping lane to the Scottish city of Dundee and only protrudes above the surface of the water for three to four hours at low tide.
The rock is named Bell Rock after monks tried to warn approaching ships with a bell. However, the bell tower only survived a year in the stormy North Sea.
The lighthouse was built by the Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson , completed in 1811 and went into operation on February 1, 1811. It was one of the first lighthouses to be equipped with rotating light signals. The lighthouse has a height of 35 meters. It has been unmanned since 1998. The tower is under the Northern Lighthouse Board . The families of the lighthouse keepers once had the residential building, now operated as the Signal Tower Museum , at their disposal, through which communication with the lighthouse was possible.
construction
When the lighthouse was erected, the problem was that the entire structure had to be erected on a rock that was not flooded by water for only a few hours a day. Earlier attempts to set up such navigation marks therefore relied on wooden constructions, including on Bell Rock. The lack of durability of such structures led, after a severe storm in 1799, to the idea of building a stone lighthouse there. Stevenson conducted the first exploration work on Bell Rock in 1800. But only after a devastating shipwreck in which the liner HMS York sank with all crew members, the decision was made in 1804 to start construction.
The solution to the construction problem was found in the construction of the Eddystone lighthouse , which was built by John Smeaton using a kind of building block technique. The construction consists of elements interlocked with wedge and dovetail shapes, which, prefabricated on land, were put together in layers on the Bell Rock. The individual layers were connected to one another by inlaid stone blocks. Construction began in the summer of 1807 and in 1811 the lighthouse was ready for use.
Web links
- Bellrock.org.uk - English language website about the lighthouse
- Bell Rock Lighthouse on the Northern Lighthouse Board website