A new exhibition at a north-east museum is focusing on the lives of the men charged with keeping generations of mariners safe.
The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses in Fraserburgh is playing host to Remembering the Lightkeepers.
It is looking at the social side of the one of the toughest jobs around the coastline and featuring some of the objects used and made by lighthouse keepers.
The display also features items created by keepers who often spent weeks alone in the lighthouses prior to the advent of automation.
Bill Gault was the last keeper to leave a Scottish lighthouse in 1998 when he finished at Fair Isle South.
All of the country’s facilities are now operated from the Northern Lighthouse Board’s base in Edinburgh.
The Fraserburgh exhibition has been organised by Aberdeen University museum studies student Emily Scott.
She is currently on a placement in Fraserburgh and said lighthouses have been a source of fascination for her.
Miss Scott said: “I’ve always been intrigued by lighthouses. There is something mysterious and calming about them. Doing this placement has allowed me to see their role in society better. I hadn’t thought too much about automation in lighthouses, but now I’m much more aware of the changes that came with that”
“I’ve learned a lot about Scotland in the process, which is great for me as an international student. I now think of geography in terms of where there is a lighthouse, which is a unique skill.”
Michael Strachan, collections manager at the lighthouse museum, said it was an opportunity to showcase a way of life that no longer exists.
Mr Strachan added: “Now that we are over 20 years into the age of automation, we felt it was important to have an exhibition showing the more human side of lightkeeping.
“The exhibition really does show that lightkeeping wasn’t just a job. It was a unique and now lost way of life which deserves to be remembered and commemorated.”
Remembering the Lightkeepers runs until June next year.
