The lighthouse family: New exhibition highlights Scotland's lost occupation

• John Boath, pictured in 1988, was one of Scotland's last keepers before automation, and worked on the Bell Rock, pictured below

SIXTY-EIGHT-year-old John Boath works in security at the Methodist Church in Edinburgh's Nicolson Square. His office is like an ice-box, but he seems perfectly comfortable. "Oh, I don't feel the cold," he says with a laugh. "For obvious reasons."

Boath doesn't feel the cold because he spent 28 years working as a lighthouse keeper, moving his wife and four children (one of whom was born in a lighthouse) around Scotland as he was posted to every corner of the country, from Orkney to the Isle of May.

As jobs go, being a lighthouse keeper is often thought of as both one of the loneliest and one of the most romantic. It is also one which – alongside lamplighters and petrol pump attendants – is now redundant, since all the lighthouses in Scotland became automated just over a decade ago. But for the people who once manned the lighthouses around Scotland's coast – one of the most dangerous in the world – their memories of the times they spent on them are as evocative as the salty sea air.

This month an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland will celebrate two centuries of lighthouses in Scotland, and will include recorded interviews with some of the keepers who manned them, including Boath. Shining Lights examines the history of lighthouses, from shipwrecks and early solutions – which included bonfires lit on top of towers on the Isle of May – to the present day, where they are automated and controlled from a single room in Edinburgh. It looks at the construction of the buildings and includes displays of giant optics, lighthouse models and even a piece of lead taken from the stomach of a former lighthouse keeper who had stared up open-mouthed as his lighthouse caught fire and its lead roof melted.

The exhibition will mark 200 years since the lighting of the world's oldest rock lighthouse, the Bell Rock near Arbroath, designed by Robert Stevenson who came from a Scottish lighthouse dynasty that developed, designed and built almost all of Scotland's 208 lighthouses. Bell Rock, immortalized by JMW Turner, remains the most famous. A 36-metre tall tower 14 miles out at sea, 20th-century keepers dreaded being posted to it.

"We used to say that if you were a naughty boy you were shifted to the Bell," says Boath, who was posted there for three years. "You were stuck on it for six weeks with no place to go, very little heating, no water for washing. If you'd been to the Bell you'd understand immediately why no-one wanted to be posted there."

The Boaths' lives varied dramatically depending on where John was posted. If he was assigned to a rock lighthouse, the children wouldn't see their father for weeks on end. Mainland lighthouses, on the other hand, were often idyllic. "I never regretted becoming a lighthouse keeper," says Boath. "It gave my family a first-class childhood and my wife thoroughly enjoyed it. We're coming up for 50 years of marriage, and if I'd been in a civilian job we'd probably be divorced by now. For the last 10-12 years of my service I was away from home a lot. I know it sounds selfish but my wife understood that it was my job. But when I came ashore, she was the head of the house and I would walk through the door and it would change. This would cause wee conflicts, so I think that sometimes she'd be glad to see the back of me!"

The lives of keepers and their families will be explored via video interviews as part of Shining Lights, and the exhibition will also tell the story of the people who designed and built Scotland's lighthouses, illuminating a safe passage for mariners for more than 250 years. Most of the pieces which make up the exhibition were assembled during the latter half of the 19th century for display in the Royal Museum building on Edinburgh's Chambers Street, and at the centre of the exhibition is the contribution by the Stevenson dynasty, whose talents were recognised internationally. Boath worked in Dundee's jute mills in his mid-twenties until he saw a segment on Blue Peter about lighthouse keepers. "I didn't really like the noise and the bustle of the jute mills," he says. "When I saw the lighthouse on television, I thought, 'I wouldn't mind doing that.' Then about six weeks later I saw an advertisement for lighthouse keepers in the Dundee Courier and I applied. A vacancy came up at Stoer Head, and I didn't even know where it was. It was like a big adventure. It reminded me of those guys who jumped into wagons and headed through Arizona, because we had never been north of Dundee in those days."

Boath had been working on the Isle of May for just over a year, when he was relocated once again. "I got the phone call on a Friday afternoon that everybody dreaded: "Mr Boath, you've been promoted to the Bell Rock. I was picked up in my uniform by chauffeur-driven limousine. I would be driven down to the docks and from there I would sail out to the lighthouse. We would sail off down to the Forth and the first drop off would be Inchkeith, then the Bass Rock, then the Isle of May and then finally down to the Bell, where an excellent landing meant that you were only going to get wet. The changeover would happen as quickly as possible, like changing a tyre at Formula One." Once the keepers were safely on the lighthouse, they'd settle down for a four to six-week spell, spending their time on cleaning and maintenance, taking turns to cook and generally trying to stay warm and busy.

• The magnificent Bell Rock lighthouse

"I'd walk up and down the grate for exercise, letting my mind drift," says Boath. "And as I was thinking I'd be looking at the grate for repairs. I'd have a walk on the reef and look for mussels. Sometimes I'd be down there and the tide would be lapping round my ankles and it would be such a nice night that I wouldn't bother going in."

While such romantic ideals of life on a lighthouse will be explored in the exhibition, via paintings, photographs, books and charts dating back to the 17th century, lighthouse technology will also be a focus. Visitors can see examples of beacons and lenses, and highlights of the collection include reflectors, clocks and a 17th-century brass nocturnal, which showed the time at night by measuring the rotation of the constellations of the Great Bear and the Little Bear around the Pole Star.

Sixty-two-year-old Ian Duff worked as a keeper from 1976-1992 and has been interviewed for the exhibition. For the first 18 months of his career, he was moved around 13 lighthouses, before being given a permanent posting at Skerryvore lighthouse near Tiree, a model of which can be seen in Shining Lights. "I always wanted to be a lighthouse keeper, from when I went on a Sunday school outing to a lighthouse as a small boy," he says. "I have always found them fascinating, and I loved the work. It could be dangerous at times, of course. At Skerryvore, you had to climb up 30 feet of rock just to get to the door. On a calm summer morning I would stand at that door and watch the seals bask on the rocks. During the winter, I would just stand there and watch the sea, all white and frothy."

It wasn't always so scenic, however, and the weather could be dangerous. "The sea could be wild, but it was the wind that was frightening. I remember one time the wind being so strong that it picked up me and my wife and threw us against the wall of the engine room. Another time, I was waiting for a helicopter to land on the helipad to take me ashore and a big wave came over it and damaged one of the rotors."

Both Duff and Boath used their spare time in the lighthouse to develop their hobbies, including toymaking, writing, painting and, of course, putting ships in bottles. Both have kept in touch with other ex-keepers across the country, and Duff still writes to former keepers across the globe. While Boath works in security, Duff drives a taxi, and many of their old colleagues are no longer around to share their tales. Yet the romantic notion of life on a lighthouse still survives, and while the few remaining lighthouse keepers do, it's important to listen to their stories.