Project leaders Dan Lee and Sean Bell update us on the progress of From Peat Spade to Tangle Trade so far:
We have completed the project launch events in the North Isles!
These have been a real success with 95 folk attending in total. At the launches, we gave an introduction talk and then asked islanders to mark industrial sites they know of on a large map. There are some sites that have already been recorded, in the national record for the historic environment (Canmore) and coastal surveys, but there are lots of important sites that have not been recorded yet.
Even when a site is recorded in Canmore, the entries often don’t have much information. The Industrial Heritage project will bring these important sites into focus. Very little field recording for industrial heritage and archaeology has been undertaken in Orkney, a gap this project aims to redress.
The launches have given us a really good idea about what sites and themes islanders are interested in and enabled us to plan some fieldwork. We are not undertaking any excavation in this project and will using measured survey, building recording and photographs to record the sites.
What has been apparent is that each island has its own industrial story, with some common themes across the North Isles.
Kelp working was an important industry for nearly 200 years, with the material dried and burnt in kelp pits to form a solid “cake”. This was used to supply the glass industry across Britain with potash.
The boom for the industry lasted from the mid-eighteenth century until the early nineteenth century. The profits brought great wealth to the lairds. There was a smaller boom in the late nineteenth century when kelp was used to provide iodine for antiseptics.
Later tangle was dried and exported in bundles for the alginate industry in the late twentieth century and many folk can remember this process and the income it provided.
Lots of important historical research has been undertaken on the kelp working (e.g. Thomson’s Kelp making in Orkney from 1983) but none of these sites have been recorded on the ground – that’s were archaeology comes in.
Many kelp pits or steeths (also known as beeks or tangle dykes, for drying seaweed) are now being covered in sand or eroded by the sea. There is an urgent need to record them before the tangible remains of this important industry are lost.
For Eday, there is a different story of peat and stone.
Peat was cut on an industrial scale to supply other islands and the towns in Orkney and export to distilleries in the south. Eday freestone has been quarried for hundreds of years and used to build St Magnus Cathedral and the Kirkwall Town Hall. The large quarry at Fersness is a key site we will be recording.
The next stage of the project is to undertake survey days in the islands, when there will be opportunities for islanders to learn field identification, survey and recording skills.
