Digest>Archives> May 2001

The Last Lighthouse Keeper

By Sharma Krauskopf

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Like most people who live in a historic place, I have a predisposition to research the history of the Eshaness Lighthouse station. Eventually, I want to do a story or maybe a book on it. In the beginning of my search for information I found the last keeper before Eshaness was automated in 1972 was still alive and lived not too far from me.

Most of the time I am not a procrastinator. When something needs doing I just do it. But - when I am at the lighthouse there are just so many important things to do like visiting the seals, watching the puffins or just sitting and staring at the sea that I have a tendency to put things off until tomorrow.

A few weeks ago I was in Lerwick on one of my sporadic trips for essentials. Walking down the street I glanced at the death notices that are placed in the windows of the floral shops in Shetland. William Gifford of West Nesting had died at age 88. Hopefully it was not THE Willie Gifford who had been the last keeper at Eshaness. If so, a piece of history that I so wanted to hear had gone with him. Contacting the current attendant keeper for Eshaness, I was distressed to find out that it was indeed the same Willie Gifford. My first priority was to try to send flowers to the funeral from the lighthouse so his role as lighthouse keeper would not be forgotten. I was even too late to do that as the flowers had already left Lerwick for the area where the funeral was to be held.

The Shetland Post, a monthly Shetland newspaper, had done a story on me as the current resident of Eshaness and had followed it up the next month with a story about Willie as the past keeper. That story by Hans Mather has the only bits of history from Willie that I have. The following is an excerpt from that story.

Among his many duties, from putting on the light, maintaining the property and the engines, keeping a record of the weather, filling in endless forms for the Lighthouse Board, another one was added when he was made Lighthouse Keeper in Eshaness: dealing with holidaymakers.

“There were many buses with holidaymakers coming to the lighthouse. I showed them around, six at a time up to the light. I had cleaned all the brass beforehand, so that everything was spotless, and afterwards it was all finger marked,” he recalls.

Eshaness “was a quiet sort of place,” he says. Here, he was the sole Lighthouse Keeper, on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An occasional keeper was stepping in during holiday periods. With the family staying in the same building, and having a road leading up to lighthouse, the Giffords were almost able to lead a life that most of us would describe as normal.

But then, having been built in 1930 right on the edge of one of the most treacherous seas, the lighthouse was the target of monstrous seas that build up in the Northeast Atlantic.

“You have no idea about the storms,” he starts his tales about the ferociousness of Mother Nature. “The station was about 30 yards back from the cliffs and it was about 200 feet from the cliffs down to the sea. And the tower of the lighthouse was 50 feet high. When there was a westerly gale the sea would go away out for about a quarter of a mile and then it would mount up and up until it was higher than the cliffs, and the earth was shaking when these millions of tons of water hit the cliffs. In the wintertime, from the 1st of October until the end of April, we had one-inch thick wooden shutters on the windows with padlocks on them.” A canvas shelter on top of the chimneys to prevent seawater from extinguishing the all-important fire also proved essential.

And then there is ‘The Canon’ that fires huge columns of water across the land. Its bangs can be heard all over Eshaness in stormy nights and it makes the ground vibrate. ‘The Canon’ is, of course, a small blowhole from a partly collapsed sea cave, just five minutes away from the lighthouse.

“When the great wall of water comes in, maybe 100 feet high, the whole cave fills with water and so does the pipe. The force that fills the cave sends the water out of the pipe, and that is when we get the bang. I have been down there and stood above it. It is a bit wider than a telegraph pole and goes twice the length of a pole straight out above the blowhole.”

A scary place indeed, but Mr Gifford says he never was frightened regardless of where he was stationed. The only thing you need to survive as a lighthouse keeper is “common sense,” he says.

I want to thank Hans Mather of the Shetland Post news service for letting me use the material above and for doing what I had failed to do—getting some of Willie’s facts on record.

All lighthouses are bursting with history. Some of the history is considered significant and recorded in many places like shipwrecks occurring near the facility. But the history I am the most concerned about are the wonderfully personal stories of the keepers. As the days pass we lose a little of that history with the death of those whose job title at one time was ‘lighthouse keeper.’ In early June, I am meeting with all of the former lighthouse keepers who now live on Fair Isle Shetland (I believe there are four of them.) to get as much of their story on tape as possible.

The depressing part of this little essay is that the facts which only Willie Gifford, former lighthouse keeper of Eshaness Lighthouse, knew are now gone forever.

Sharma Krauskopf’s column, “Light Reflections” is a regular feature in Lighthouse Digest. Her books The Last Lighthouse and Scottish Lighthouses are available through Lighthouse Depot (1-800-758-1444). You can email Sharma at - Hilltopfarm@mindspring.com.

This story appeared in the May 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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