Pentland Skerries

Aerial photograph of Muckle Skerry

The Pentland Skerries are a group of four uninhabited islands lying at the eastern end of the Pentland Firth between Orkney and Caithness. They lie northeast of Duncansby Head, at the end of mainland Great Britain and south of South Ronaldsay in Orkney. The skerries are deemed to belong to Orkney

By far the largest of the islands is Muckle Skerry, home to two lighthouses, built in 1794. The other islands are Little Skerry, Louther Skerry and Clettack Skerry, and various rocks, many treacherously submerged at high tide.

These rocks were apparently known in Old Norse as the Pettlandssker.)

Lighthouse

Main article: Muckle Skerry

The Pentland Firth has a reputation among mariners as a fearsome channel, needing courage and great care, and this is a well-deserved reputation, as the tides passing back and forth between the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea, changing direction twice a day and forced through this gap, produce currents of up to 12 knots. The skerries are at the entrance to this seaway, not at its fiercest point but a hazard in themselves.

The lighthouse on the Skerries was built in 1794, and it was only the fifth modern lighthouse to be built in Scotland. In a later age it became an unlikely theatre of war, when a German U-boat machine-gunned the lighthouse in 1941, without casualties.

Outside links

• Location map: 58°40’60"N, 2°54’-0"W
• OS map: ND47927763
• Northern Lighthouse Board – Pentland Skerries