Overtoun House is a 19th-century country house and estate in West Dunbartonshire. The house, an example of Scottish Baronial architecture, was built in the 1860s, and was donated to the people of Dumbarton in 1938. It was subsequently a maternity hospital, and now houses a Christian centre. The house is protected as a category A listed building, while the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland.
Overtoun Bridge is a structure over the Overtoun Burn. It was completed in 1895 to a design by the landscape architect H. E. Milner.
Since 2005, media publicity has been given to reports of a number of dogs either falling or jumping from the bridge, resulting in injury or death upon landing on the rocks some 15m below; the bridge has also been the site of a murder and an attempted suicide. Explanations for these deaths have ranged from claims of ghosts and supernatural causes to natural explanations of dogs being attracted to the scent or sounds of nearby animals in the undergrowth, and consequently losing their balance on the sloping surfaces of the bridge's parapet.
References:Towering 52 meters above the sea, Bengtskär lighthouse is the tallest one in Scandinavia. The building started in in 1905 after the shipwreck of S/S Helsingfors and was completed in 1906. The lighthouse was designed by architect Florentin Granholm. On December a special petrol lantern, designed and built in Paris, was brought to Bengtskär and installed atop the tower.
German fleet bombarded Bengstkär in the First World War in 1914. Since the Gulf of Finland was heavily mined, it was not until 1919 that the surrounding seas were declared safe for shipping, that the light was lit again.
After the war the military value of Bengtskär increased as part of the defence system of independent Finland. In Second World War (1941) Soviet Union made a suprise attack to island. After a bloody battle, the small Finnish garrison emerged victorious. Intermittent repairs to the facility continued during the post-war period.