Granton Lighthouse
Granton Lighthouse is a historic depot on West Harbour Road in Granton, Edinburgh. It was built in the 1860s for the Northern Lighthouse Board and is now used as business space.
The building is a two-storey red-brick warehouse with a small corner tower topped by a lighthouse lantern cupola. The tower was never an active lighthouse; it was used to test lamps and other equipment.
The depot stored and distributed supplies for Scotland’s lighthouses. From 1874 to the early 1970s, the nearby NLV Pharos lighthouse tender used Granton Harbour to bring goods to the depot and to ship out items like buoys, oil, paint, and other materials. The site included an administration office, a workshop, and storage for casting patterns.
In 1892 a coal gasworks was built to fuel beacons, but it was removed in the 1930s when acetylene took over. A railway siding and overhead crane were added in 1907. During World War II, one lantern pane reportedly had a bullet hole from a Luftwaffe air raid.
Granton Lighthouse received Category C listed status in 1985. A nearby keeper’s cottage at 20 West Harbour Road was listed in 1998. The Northern Lighthouse Board used the depot until November 2001, when operations moved to Oban. The building has since been converted into business space, including a recording studio, and there were plans to turn the site into a hotel and conference centre, which did not go ahead.
On 29 September 2025, the National Transport Trust installed a Red Wheel plaque on the building.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:51 (CET).