Museum of Scottish Lighthouses

About this place

Museum at Kinnaird Head in Fraserburgh telling the story of Scotland's lighthouses, with tower tours.

Housed at Kinnaird Head in Fraserburgh, this museum tells the story of Scotland's lighthouses through the Stevenson family of engineers who built most of them, centred on Kinnaird Head Lighthouse itself, Scotland's first mainland lighthouse, built in 1787 by Thomas Smith. Tower tours climb up into the lighthouse to see the original lens mechanism up close, giving children a proper sense of how these remote, once-vital buildings actually worked. The exhibition halls below cover shipwrecks, engineering and the isolated lives of lighthouse keepers and their families. There's an admission charge including the tower tour, and while the museum galleries are accessible, the lighthouse tower itself involves a narrow spiral stair.

Make a day of it — within 5km