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BELL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE 



Is situate on the reef of rocks on the eastern coast of Scotland, 

 near Arbroath in Forfarshire. These rocks had always been particularly 

 dangerous for shipping, and, it is said, that in ancient times the monks 

 of the Abbey of Arbroath erected a bell, called the inchcape bell, on 

 the rock, which was rung by machinery during the flowing and eboing 

 of the tide, in a manner probably similar to the ingenious one at New 

 Channel, Liverpool. The Bell Rock light-house was begun in 1807, 

 and completed in 1810, by Mr. Stevenson, at a cost of 60,000. The 

 rock itself measures four hundred and twenty-seven feet in length by 

 two hundred broad, and is about twelve feet under water at the spring 

 tides. The light-house is a circular building, forty-two feet in diameter 

 at the base, and thirteen feet at the top, the masonry is one hundred feet 

 high, and, including the lightroom, is one hundred and fifteen feet; the 

 ascent from the rock to the top of the solid or lowest story, thirty feet, 

 used to be by means of a trap ladder, but is now by brass stairs, and to 

 the other rooms by wooden steps. The lower courses of stones are 

 trenailed, and wedged together with oak timber, to the height of upwards 

 of forty feet, or throughout the solid part of the building. At the stone 

 staircase leading from the door to the first floor, the walls are of the 

 medium thickness of about seven feet; this thickness gradually 

 diminishes upwards, till under the cornice of the building it extends 

 only to eighteen inches. The stones of the walls of the several apart- 

 ments are connected at the ends with dove tailed joints, instead of 

 square joggles, as in the solid and in the staircases; the floors are 

 constructed in a manner which adds much to the bond or union of the 

 fabric. Instead of being arched, which would have given a tendency or 

 pressure outwards on the walls, the floors are formed of long stones, 

 radiating from the centre of the respective apartments, and at the same time 

 forming a course of the outward wall of the building; these floor stones 

 are also joggled sideways, and upon the whole form a complete girth at 

 each story. In this manner, the pressure of the floors upon the walls is 

 rendered perpendicular, while the side joggles resemble the groove and 

 feather in carpentry. In the stranger's room, or library, the roof takes 

 an arched form, but the curve is cut only by the interior ends of the 

 stones of the cornice, the several courses of which it is composed being 

 all laid upon level beds; the stones used in this surprising structure, 



