Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Cape Wrath

Cape Wrath, a promontory in Durness parish, Sutherland, at the north-western extremity of the Scottish mainland, 13 miles WNW of Durness church. Pyramidal in form, it rises boldly from the sea to an altitude of 300 feet; it consists of granite gneiss; it is crowned with a lighthouse, built in 1828 at a cost of £13,550, showing a revolving light every minute, alternately red and white, visible at the distance of 27 nautical miles; and it commands a magnificent view of the Sutherland coast and of the seas around, away to the Butt of Lewis and the Hoy Head of Orkney. Rocky islets lie adjacent to it; a fissured and cavernous reef projects from its base; a lofty insulated rock, with outline rudely resembling that of a large ship under full sail, is in its near vicinity; and wall-like cliffs, 250 to 600 feet high, and pierced with caverns, stretch away from it eastward and southward 'This dread cape,' wrote Sir Walter Scott (1814), ' so fatal to mariners, is a high promontory whose steep sides go sheer down to the breakers which lash its feet. There is no landing, except in a small creek about 1½ mile to the eastward. There the foam of the sea plays at "long bowls" with a huge collection of large stones, some of them a ton in weight, but which these fearful billows chuck up and down as a child tosses a ball. '


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a promontory"   (ADL Feature Type: "capes")
Administrative units: Durness ScoP       Sutherland ScoCnty
Place: Cape Wrath

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