Fog Horn, Lighthouse, Kirkabister Ness, Bressay

The lighthouse keeper’s cottages at Kirkabister Ness, Bressay, were built in 1858 by David and Thomas Stevenson, with further buildings added around 1905. The complex includes the original three-stage lighthouse tower, keepers' accommodation to the south, a later engine house and offices to the north, and a fog horn house to the west. The buildings are constructed with harled walls featuring droved ashlar margins, all painted.

The lighthouse tower has a battered circular shaft on a base course and a circular concrete plinth. A vertically-boarded timber entrance door with a two-pane fanlight is centrally located on the north side, while narrow three-pane fixed lights are centred on each lower stage facing south. A droved sandstone string course runs around the upper stage, supported by bold corbels. Above this is a balcony with a cast-iron handrail around a cylindrical murette which is topped by a lantern featuring triangular-paned glazing and an arrow weathervane vent on the dome.

The keepers' accommodation is a single-story, five-by-two bay building with an M-shaped gable. It features base and eaves courses, margined corners, and windows with projecting sills. The south elevation is irregularly fenestrated, with later concrete-roofed porches projecting at the centre and on the left side. The east gable is also irregularly fenestrated, while the north elevation is regularly fenestrated except for a blank space in the outer left bay. A small, flat-roofed stugged ashlar toilet block with a vertically-boarded timber door is adjacent to the northeast corner of the keepers' accommodation.

The engine house and oil tanks are a single story with asymmetrical seven-bay elevations on the north and south sides and blank end elevations. They include a base course, a blocking course at the eaves, long and short quoins to the corners, and windows. Rivetted cast-iron tanks are situated on concrete bases adjoining the southwest corner. The interior features glazed brick walls, tiled floors, and four-panel doors.

The store is a single-story, three-bay symmetrical building with a base course. It has a vertically-boarded timber door in each bay of the south elevation and regular fenestration on the north elevation.

The fog horn house is a single-tier tower with a battered semi-circular plan on a shuttered concrete plinth featuring a vertically-boarded timber door. An exterior wall encloses a stair and works, surmounted by a cogged track (the horn having been replaced by modern radar).

The tower incorporates three-pane fixed-lights; modern glazing is found in the keeper's accommodation, although some original timber sash and case windows consisting of six-pane upper sashes over two-pane lower sashes remain at the engine house. The keepers’ accommodation has a green slate M-roof with cast-iron gutters and downpipes, including decorative hoppers. Formal arrangements of coped, stugged sandstone and cement-rendered stacks with circular cans are located on the apexes of the west gables, ridges, and valleys. The engine house has a flat roof and a two-flue, cement-rendered stack with circular cans at the centre. The store is topped with a purple-grey slate roof with cast-iron gutters and a downpipe with a decorative hopper.

Flagstone rubble boundary walls, harl-pointed and whitewashed on the inner face, enclose the site. Stugged sandstone gatepiers with pyramidal caps mark the entrance gate to the northeast.