Keepers' House, Dunnet Head Lighthouse is a Grade B listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 28 November 1984. Lighthouse.
Keepers' House, Dunnet Head Lighthouse
- WRENN ID
- carved-portal-frost
- Grade
- B
- 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 202 767
- Coordinates
- 58.67124, -3.37642
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
The Keepers' House at Dunnet Head Lighthouse is a lighthouse complex designed by engineer Robert Stevenson in 1831. It features a short circular tower with a semi-circular single-storey building at its base. The tower has a corbelled parapet topped with a lattice cast-iron balustrade and a circular domed light made of lattice panes. The structure is finished in white-painted tooled ashlar.
The keepers' houses consist of a pair of single-storey, four-bay homes, each with an advanced off-centre bay and slightly lower outer single-storey, single-bay additions. These houses are also made of white-painted tooled ashlar, with contrasting painted cills and a base course, and they feature 12-pane glazing, although modern windows have been added to the later extensions. The buildings have an eaves band and a blocking course, with flat roofs.
Additionally, there is a later block that includes a single-storey, three-bay house connected to a four-bay equipment room. A fluted cast-iron sundial is present on the site.
The lighthouse and the keepers' houses are enclosed by a coped rubble wall, which includes a pair of square tooled ashlar gate piers with simple square caps.
Local climate
Keepers' House, Dunnet Head Lighthouse receives an average of 930 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 71% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 70% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 9 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 92% 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 0.3°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
- 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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