The Riv Beacon, Sanday

The Riv Beacon, Sanday, was built in 1863–4 by the Northern Lighthouse Board, based on plans by the board's engineer, Alan Stevenson. It serves as an unlit beacon marking the seaward end of the Riv, a low-lying reef of rock, boulders, and stones extending approximately 1 kilometer north from Burness, west of Whitemill Bay, on the North Ronaldsay Firth.

The beacon stands on bedrock and is an iron structure 14 meters high, constructed of six columns of cast iron with horizontal bracing. The columns are topped by a cylindrical open iron cage, which has a cross on top, and provided a place of refuge for shipwrecked mariners. An iron platform and ladder within the columned structure offered access from ground level to the cage.

Historical records from the Old Statistical Account (1793) detail the danger to shipping around Sanday and North Ronaldsay, noting the loss of approximately 5,000 tons of shipping over an 18-year period leading up to 1793. While a lighthouse was built at Start Point in 1806 to mark the eastern entrance to the North Ronaldsay Firth, the western approaches remained unmarked, including the hazardous Riv, where four shipwreck incidents occurred between 1809 and 1864.

Construction of the beacon at The Riv began in 1863 and was completed in the spring of 1864, as announced in the Orkney Herald and Weekly Advertiser and Gazette. The beacon is shown on Ordnance Survey First Edition mapping (surveyed 1879, published 1882) and as a 34-foot red beacon on Admiralty Charts (revised 1893).