Sundial at Fair Isle North (Skroo) Lighthouse, Fair Isle

Fair Isle North (Skroo) Lighthouse, Fair Isle

A group of lighthouse buildings designed by David and Charles Stevenson and dated 1891, situated on a flat cliff-top site. The complex is enclosed within a boundary wall and comprises a principal building containing engine and control rooms with a 3-stage tower centred to its rear (north-east), foundations of a former accommodation block surviving to the south-west, and an occasional keeper's house to the west. A walkway leads from the main complex to a fog horn house on a promontory to the east.

The principal building is a single storey structure with eleven bays (grouped 2-7-2) arranged in near-symmetrical form around the tower which projects from the rear. It has a concrete base course and wallhead cope, with harled walls, brick quoins to corners and openings, and concrete dressings and details throughout, all painted.

The west elevation, which serves as the entrance front, is near-symmetrical. The principal entrance door is positioned in the centre bay and is flanked by brick pilasters, with an oval datestone and lighthouse armorial panel rising into a stepped wallhead above. Three closely-spaced and regularly fenestrated bays occupy the right side, whilst three closely-spaced bays to the left feature a wide segmental arch in the outer left bay, with doors and windows in the penultimate and outer bays respectively. The wallhead rises over the centre bays.

The side elevations are symmetrical with regularly fenestrated 2-bay treatments. The east elevation presents a 5-bay symmetrical design with the tower projecting at its centre and regular fenestration in the flanking bays.

The 3-stage tower comprises a battered shaft with narrow 2-pane fixed lights, with long and short dressings to the east and west at the first and second stages respectively. Cast-iron brackets support a balcony with cast-iron handrail around the upper stage, which comprises a cylindrical murette with portholes and a door to the north. A cast-iron cleaning path runs around the lantern, which features triangular-paned glazing and is surmounted by a dome with an arrow vane to vent.

The interior contains a stone spiral stair with timber handrail. The first and second stages have vertically-boarded timber lining, with a weight-stand corbelled out into the stairwell at first floor level. The third stage features hexagonal timber and brass portholes around its wall.

The former accommodation block is represented only by the remains of concrete foundations and floors to a symmetrical rectangular building that was demolished in 1984.

The occasional keeper's house is a single storey, 2-bay flat-roofed structure. Its south elevation contains 9 and 6-pane timber sash and case windows, whilst a vertically-boarded timber door is offset to the right in the east elevation. A cast-iron downpipe with hopper is present.

A bollard-like cast-iron plinth once supported a sundial on a square stone base, though the sundial was removed in 1996.

The boundary wall forming a rectangular enclosure is constructed of random rubble with a rubble cope and a wrought-iron gate positioned at its north corner. Bull-face stone gatepiers with pyramidal caps mark the principal entrance, whilst stugged stone gatepiers with bases and pyramidal caps stand at the north-east corner of the complex, with an adjoining wrought-iron gate to the west.

The walkway is finished with an in situ concrete cope and is flanked by iron fence-posts.

The fog horn house is a single storey mono-pitch structure, circumvented to the east by a battered semicircular wall with a cogged iron track on its wallhead supporting a bell of a rotating riveted iron horn. Riveted iron oil tanks stand to the west.