Auskerry Lighthouse
Auskerry is a small, remote island in the Orkney archipelago of northern Scotland, lying roughly five miles south of Stronsay in the outer island chain. The island measures barely half a mile in length and is one of the most isolated and least-visited of all the Orkney islands. The lighthouse that stands here, built by the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, is the defining feature of this wind-scoured outcrop and the principal reason the island has any human history at all. Auskerry Lighthouse warns mariners of the dangerous waters at the approach to the String, the sound between Stronsay and the Mainland, and its light has guided fishermen and cargo vessels through some of the most treacherous seas in the British Isles for well over a century.
The lighthouse was constructed in 1867 to a design overseen by the Northern Lighthouse Board, the body responsible for all Scottish lighthouses. It stands approximately 34 metres above sea level and was designed in the characteristic white-painted tower style typical of nineteenth-century Scottish lighthouse engineering. Like many lighthouses of its era, it was originally attended by a keeper and his family, who lived in the adjacent cottages in what must have been extraordinary isolation. The station was eventually automated, as were the vast majority of Scottish lighthouses during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and the keepers' cottages now stand empty for most of the year, giving the island a haunting, abandoned quality.
In physical terms, Auskerry is a flat, grassy island shaped by relentless Atlantic and North Sea winds. The lighthouse tower is brilliant white against the grey-green vegetation and the enormous skies of Orkney. Approaching by sea, the tower appears gradually above the low horizon of the island, a solitary and commanding presence. On the island itself, the wind is a near-constant companion, and the soundscape is dominated by the cry of seabirds, the crash of surf against the rocky shoreline, and on foggy days, the moan of the fog signal. The air is intensely clean and carries the salt tang of the surrounding sea.
The island is particularly celebrated among ornithologists and naturalists. Auskerry supports important breeding colonies of storm petrels, one of the most secretive of all seabirds, as well as puffins, razorbills, guillemots, and arctic terns. The Orkney Ringing Group has conducted seabird studies on the island for many decades, and it is one of the most significant sites in Scotland for monitoring storm petrel populations. For birdwatchers willing to make the considerable effort of reaching the island, it offers encounters with wildlife that are genuinely extraordinary.
Access to Auskerry is difficult and there is no regular ferry service. The island is occasionally accessible by arrangement with local boat operators from Stronsay, but visits require careful planning and an acceptance of unpredictable weather. The nearest inhabited island, Stronsay, can be reached by ferry from Kirkwall on the Orkney Mainland. Any visit to Auskerry must be approached with full awareness that conditions in these waters can change rapidly, and that the island has no facilities, no shelter beyond the lighthouse outbuildings, and no means of emergency contact beyond what visitors bring themselves. The best time to visit is during summer months, particularly May through July, when the seabird colonies are at their most active and the weather, while never guaranteed, is at its most forgiving.
A hidden and touching dimension of the island's history lies in the lives of the lighthouse keepers and their families who endured postings here. Their isolation was profound even by the standards of remote lighthouse stations, and records and personal accounts speak of the psychological challenge of winters spent on this speck of rock in northern waters. The automated light that now blinks across the Orkney sea each night stands as a quietly eloquent memorial to that vanished community of keepers, their families, and their extraordinary self-sufficiency in one of the loneliest postings in the British lighthouse service.