French Hotel (now " Stevenson House"), Monterey, California, where he stayed in 1879 Family in 1893: Wife Fanny, Stevenson, his stepdaughter Isobel, and his mother Margaret Balfour

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Historic Scotland, Scran, Canmore, The National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP), The Engine Shed, Stirling Castle and Edinburgh Castle are sub-brands of HES. The archive also contains railway plans by other mid-century railway engineers, including James Jardine and Thomas Grainger and John Miller, possibly collected by the Stevensons for reference.Bella Bathurst has built a lamp herself: it illuminates the work of a literary hero, a family business, a habit of mind and a Scottish period… from the summit of this first terrific book she looks to become one of the best biographers of her generation’Andrew O’Hagan, The Times - Bella Bathhurst has traced the extraordinary careers of the Stevensons, from the first of the lights to the last of the keepers. In sharp, inspired prose she presents a mesmerising account of these little-known Scottish heroes, of whom their better-known literary descendant remarked, 'I might write books till 1900 and not serve humanity so well.' At Sumburgh Head, Robert had made a detailed survey to identify the best place to build. He chose the top of a cliff and, with a relatively short tower, the light could be seen for 24 miles in 1832. “Some lights never made that distance even in the 20th century,” observes Strachan. He had "seen these judgments of God", not only in Hawaii where abandoned native churches stood like tombstones "over a grave, in the midst of the white men’s sugar fields", but also in Ireland and "in the mountains of my own country Scotland".

Northern Lighthouse Board Skerryvore - Northern Lighthouse Board

The 19th May saw the start of operations in 1842 and on 25 July the last stone of the top was laid. The masonry of the tower was now 137 feet 11 inches in height and it contained 58,580 cubic feet of material of about 4,308 tons. The lantern arrived in sections and was assembled during August and September of that year. A second smaller set of canal plans in the archive date from 1904 and illustrate plans by D. & C. Stevenson for a National Ship Canal stretching from Loch Lomond to the Firth of Forth. No canal construction plans date from the period 1850-1887 when David and Thomas Stevenson were in charge of the firm. David Stevenson’s sons, David and Charles, also pursued lighthouse engineering from the late 19th century to the late 1930s, building nearly 30 more lighthouses. Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. [3] His father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city. Alan died of an epidemic fever on the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies on 26 May 1774, a few days before Robert's second birthday. Robert's uncle died of the same disease around the same time. Since this left Alan's widow, Jean Lillie Stevenson, in much-reduced financial circumstances, Robert was educated, as a young child, at a charity school.Part of a plan & section of an aqueduct & reservoirs for supplying the city of Edinburgh & town & port of Leith with water by Robert Stevenson, Civil Engineer (1824) MS.5849, 98