Country life
Seeing the light
Leanda de Lisle
For members of the Northern Light- house Board, the Edinburgh Festival offers nothing like the drama on the Orkney island of Eday in which they find them- selves cast in the role of villain. The small population of this wild and remote place are in open revolt over their proposal to tear down Eday's 'bonny' old lighthouse and replace it with a 'public lavatory turned on its side'.
The board can't have thought it was entering very controversial territory when it first decided that Eday required one of the new solar-powered lighthouses it has been dotting all over the coastline of Scotland. It was, after all, 'modern' and 'environmental- ly friendly'. There seemed to be no need to consult the locals about it and plans to pull down the old cast-iron lighthouse were duly announced.
Imagine the confusion when a letter then arrived from Daphne Lorimer, chairman of the Orkney Heritage Society, reminding the board that 'the existing Eday lighthouse is very much part of the landscape and the charm of the islands'. Imagine the dismay when a string of Scottish newspapers quot- - the 5 per cent surcharge is for calculating the 15 per cent gratuity.' ed the leader of a new protest movement saying that removing the Eday lighthouse would be akin to 'taking down the Tower of London'.
Built in 1909 by David A. Stevenson, a relative of Robert Louis Stevenson, the old lighthouse has featured on postcards of the island for as long as its inhabitants can remember. But, as the chief executive of the Northern Lighthouse Board told the Scotsman, it's not its job 'to provide monu- ments in the landscape, but to ensure peo- ple can navigate safely'. One suspects they are not much interested in the happy union of form and function.
However, sailors would surely be grateful for the board's consideration. At least, they would if the board was barking up the right lighthouse. According to the attendant lighthouse keeper Malcolm Scott, it is not only 'a handsome wee thing' that 'fits into the bay beautifully', it has 'worked well for more than 90 years and I'm sure would stand there and continue to work well for may more years to come'. Furthermore, 70- year-old Jimmy Thomson, the one fisher- man who still keeps a boat in the sound, suspects that changing it could actually confuse mariners. 'If they've seen it once they'll be looking for it again. For safety reasons they should leave it as it is,' he informed the press.
Between handling calls from journalists indecently excited that 96 per cent of the adults on Eday had signed a petition against the new lighthouse, the board replied to a letter from the local lairdette — a far more terrifying breed of woman than the urban ladette. Her family home, the 17th-century Carrick House, was the scene of Eday's most famous adventure, the capture of the notorious pirate John Gow. Gow's blood is said still to stain the floor of a room at Carrick and I wouldn't stand the chances of anyone from the Northern Lighthouse Board were they to visit it now.
Indeed the tone of the board's letter sug- gested that it had the wit to feel nervous even from the distance of Edinburgh. It risked the curt comment that the new light- house 'will not be, as you suggest, grossly uneconomic', but concluded engagingly enough, 'Please be assured that the North- ern Lighthouse Board sympathises with the people of Eday in seeking to retain the existing structure ... [and] . , . is entirely willing to transfer the Stevenson structure to another part of the island ... I very much look forward to your agreement.' No such agreement has been forthcoming, and the Scots Nats' Passionara, Winnie Ewing, has now taken up the cause. The flak seems to have prompted the Northern Lighthouse Board to visit the island that is giving it so much trouble. It might have been better if board members had thought to involve local people in decisions affecting the island in the first place. But perhaps this colourful drama will now have a happy ending.
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