Noss Head Lighthouse is a Grade A listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 28 November 1984. 1 related planning application.
Noss Head Lighthouse
- WRENN ID
- odd-spire-torch
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP: Jamie Stone (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 28 November 1984
- OS grid reference
- ND 388 550
- Coordinates
- 58.47902, -3.05087
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
Noss Head Lighthouse Keepers' Houses, designed by Alan Stevenson in 1849, includes a lighthouse and two keeper's houses. The lighthouse features a medium-height circular tower made of carefully finished ashlar stone, accented with contrasting painted ashlar dressings. It has a corbelled wallhead balcony with a cast-iron balustrade and a domed lantern with diamond panes. Surrounding part of the base is a semicircular, single-storey building that has a projecting Egyptian-style entrance.
The pair of single-storey keeper's houses are each four bays wide, constructed from painted tooled ashlar with contrasting painted dressings. Each house has a projecting Egyptian porch with a coved cornice, similar cornices on the projecting outer bays, and lower single-storey, single-bay wings. The rear of the houses features channelled, battered angle pilasters. They have 12-pane glazing, tall corniced chimney stacks, and flat roofs.
The lighthouse and the cottages are connected by a low, coped tooled ashlar wall that encloses a central paved courtyard. Additionally, there is a single-storey, seven-bay range of offices that includes a gighouse with a segmental-headed entrance, former stables, and stores. This range has a later enlarged entrance on the far right and is built from rubble with contrasting tooled dressings, featuring mural vents, a pair of ridge stacks, and a corrugated asbestos roof.
Local climate
Noss Head Lighthouse receives an average of 960 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 74% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 82% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 7 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 95% of listed buildings. Of these, 6 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.2°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.