Noss Head Lighthouse Keepers' Houses is a Grade A listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 28 November 1984. Lighthouse.
Noss Head Lighthouse Keepers' Houses
- WRENN ID
- waning-rafter-shade
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP: Jamie Stone (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 28 November 1984
- Type
- Lighthouse
- OS grid reference
- ND 388 550
- Coordinates
- 58.47897, -3.0511
- 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 Keepers' Houses 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.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- 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
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