Bass Rock — island
Honge ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Bass Rock

  • Elevation107 m
  • 2 min read
  • 56.080° N 2.640° W

Interesting facts

  • The gannets' droppings are estimated to release about 152,000 kg of ammonia a year, roughly as much as 10 million broiler chickens.
  • Gannets, known in Scots as solan geese, were once harvested here for their eggs and chicks; in 1850 almost 2,000 birds were taken from the rock.
  • The coat of arms of the Lauders, who held the rock for nearly six centuries, carries a crest of a gannet sitting on a rock.
  • In 1428 a fourteen-year-old hostage, Neil MacKay, was imprisoned on the rock and became known as Neil Bhass; he later became chief of Clan MacKay.
  • The Jacobites seized the castle in 1691 while the garrison was outside unloading a coal ship, and the soldiers had to sail away on that same ship.
  • In 1694 the Jacobite leader staged a visit by government envoys to fake strength and supplies, winning surrender terms that included free passage to France.
  • An old Scots saying treated the rock as a byword for the impossible: knock down Tantallon Castle and build a bridge to the Bass.
  • The tree mallow, nicknamed the Bass mallow, grows on the rock and is otherwise found on only a few islands such as Ailsa Craig and Steep Holm.
  • Solar-powered cameras on the rock send live pictures to North Berwick sharp enough to read the identification rings on the gannets' legs.
  • The rock appears as a backdrop in the title song of the 1998 Bollywood film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Why it is worth it

For much of the year the Bass Rock looks as if it were dusted with snow. The steep volcanic stack rising 107 metres out of the Firth of Forth is home to what has been the largest colony of northern gannets in the world, more than 150,000 birds, so many that the cliffs and summit turn white with them. The species takes its scientific name, Morus bassanus, from this rock. Sheer on almost every side, the island has only one landing place, and its slopes still carry the ruins of a castle, a medieval chapel and a lighthouse.

The rock is the plug of a volcano active some 340 million years ago, related to North Berwick Law on the mainland and to Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock in Edinburgh; James Hutton was the first to recognise it as an igneous intrusion. Its human history begins with Saint Baldred, the 8th-century "Apostle of the Lothians", who kept a hermitage here; the ruined chapel halfway up the slope stands over the cell associated with him. For almost six centuries the Lauder family held the island and built a fortress just above the landing, a curtain wall with round bastions climbing the rock. In 1406 King Robert III sent his son, the future James I, to the safety of the castle, and later kings visited it: James VI liked the place so much in 1581 that he offered to buy it, and was refused.

After the Lauders lost the island in the 17th century the castle became a state prison. From 1671 it held Covenanters and other religious and political prisoners, earning the name "the Patmos of Scotland". Its most unlikely episode came in 1691, when four captive Jacobite officers seized the castle while most of the garrison was outside the walls and held it for King James VII against the new government for nearly three years. In 1706 the island passed to Sir Hew Dalrymple, whose family owned it until 2026, when it was sold to the RSPB. The lighthouse, designed by David Alan Stevenson, a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, was completed in 1902, partly from the stones of the castle's keep; Stevenson himself made the Bass a prison for his hero David Balfour in the novel Catriona. In 2022 an outbreak of avian influenza killed thousands of the gannets.

Getting there

The Bass Rock lies about 2 km offshore and about 5 km north-east of the town of North Berwick in East Lothian, the usual point of departure for boat trips around the rock; North Berwick is the terminus of a branch railway from Edinburgh. The nearest airport by road is Edinburgh Airport (EDI), on the western side of Edinburgh. St Andrews and Dundee Airport (DND) lie closer in a straight line but on the far side of the Firth of Forth.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Scotland 39The Most Beautiful Places in the United Kingdom 154The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Scotland 5The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in the United Kingdom 8The Most Beautiful Islands 59The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429

From the encyclopaedia

The Bass Rock, or simply the Bass, is an island in the outer part of the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland. Approximately 2 km (1 mi) offshore, and 5 km (3 mi) north-east of North Berwick, it is a steep-sided volcanic plug, 107 m (351 ft) at its highest point, and is home to a large colony of gannets. The rock is uninhabited, but historically has been settled by an 8th-century Christian hermit, and later was the site of an important castle, which after the Commonwealth period was used as a prison. The island belongs to RSPB Scotland, being previously owned by Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, whose family acquired it in 1706, and previously to the Lauder family for almost six centuries. The Bass Rock Lighthouse was constructed on the rock in 1902, and the remains of a chapel survive.

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