The 2008 excavationTrench 4 For a second year, a team of enthusiastic volunteers returned to Brora’s Back Beach in August. Work concentrated on a building associated with the ‘New’ Salt Works, dating to c1767-1777, which was partially exposed during the excavation of Trench 4 in 2007. An unexcavated corner of this building had collapsed over the winter and the structure appeared to be in increasing danger of eroding away completely. During the early summer, dry weather had exacerbated the damage caused by the winter storms and hastened the collapse of ‘the building with floor’ LINK TO PAGE believed to be associated with the ‘Old’ Salt Works (1598-1617), just to the east of the main excavation area. In 2008, the continued excavation of Trench 4 revealed a substantial building, neatly constructed from hard white quartzite boulders. The building had been divided into two by a wall and the centrally placed fireplace and hearth complex, discovered in 2008, lay on either side of this wall. The eastern side of the wall had a neatly built brick fireplace, contained within stone spur walls and with a heat-damaged hearth. The area around the fireplace had been paved with roughly shaped slabs, while the rest of the floor appeared to have been cobbled. Middens were seen extending around the outer walls at the eastern end of the building. These middens have been visible in the face of the dune for many years, and are known locally as the ‘coal road’. The material forming these midden deposits had been laid down in horizontal bands, formed of layers of burnt and unburnt shale/coal fragments. This suggests not so much a ‘road’, but rather waste material being used to create a firm working surface around the buildings. The western half of the building was dominated by the hearth complex backing onto the dividing wall. The excavation determined the sequence of construction and use. A primary hearth was constructed within stub walls, which mirrored the walls to the east. The first hearth was largely obscured by a slightly smaller secondary hearth, which had been built on top of it. The base of the secondary hearth was much higher than the level of the floor. The hearth was made of sandstone, turned dark red by heat. Finally, the spur walls were extended - at a slight angle to the original walling - and a brick and stone platform, pierced by two ‘flues’, supported a raised hearth, enclosed by roughly-built brick and stone walling. The base of the fire must have rested on the clay used to form the top of the platform as this had been turned orange-red by heat, remaining its original yellow grey colour around the edges. The hearth complex was surrounded by slabs of enormous thickness. However, these did not extend eastwards as far as the division wall, the gaps on either side of the hearth being filled with a deep deposit of (unburnt) coal. At the west end of the floor slabs, a number of intercutting pits had been dug into clean windblown sand, while a line of probable stakeholes suggested the presence of a wooden partition. One side of a doorway, with a brick threshold, was discovered in the south wall in the south west corner of the trench. This confirmed that the stakeholes represented an internal partition and that the building continued into the section, making its western half at least 5m long. There remain a number of unanswered questions, particularly around the nature of the deposits at the west end of the building. Flake hammer scale was identified between the slabs around the hearth complex in the eastern half of the building. This was possibly derived from repairs to the pans, which would have been undertaken frequently due to the corrosion caused by the salt. However, given the number of iron objects also recovered, it is possible that at least one phase of the hearth complex in the western half of the building functioned as a forge. This interpretation is reinforced by the relatively small size of the building, which suggests it could not have been large enough to contain even one pan. Though the size of the pans at Brora is not known, elsewhere they are recorded as measuring 18ft by 9ft by 18in (5.49m by 2.74m by 0.46m). A pan of this size would have been a tight fit within a building only 3.7m wide. In contrast, the pan houses at the St. Monans salt works, where again the pan size is not known, varied between 8.5m-8.7m and 9.2m-9.7m wide. Apart from the fireplace on the west side of the division wall, which appears domestic due to its size, there is nothing to indicate the function of this half of the building; its ‘emptiness’ suggests it might have been used for storage. The high quality of the ceramic finds - all of which appear to support a late 18thC date - somewhat offsets the impression of an industrial building. Other Trenches In addition to the main trench, a number of test pits were dug to explore anomalies identified by the geophysics undertaken by Orkney College Geophysics Unit in June 2008. These produced largely negative results, apart from one dug upslope of the ‘Saltman’s house’, identified on the basis of Farey’s 1813 map and itself lying just inland of the main trench. This revealed a roughly rectangular area of very neatly laid cobbling, on which was found a sherd of late 18thC pottery. No structural evidence was revealed, while below the cobbling - and separated from it by a build-up of windblown sand - was a thick midden deposit, consisting principally of shells. Unfortunately, the remains of a building with associated floor deposits LINK TO BUILDING WITH FLOOR , which might form part of the ‘Old’ Salt works, proved too precarious to examine this year, though (perversely) as it continues to collapse further, the floor deposits become more accessible. The second season of excavation at Brora has confirmed the quality of the remains on the Back Beach and their potential to reveal much about the industrial history of this area. Time constraints, combined with the complexity of the deposits, meant that the west end of the building in Trench 4 was left unexcavated. The enthusiasm and energy of the volunteers, mostly locals, numbering 35 in total and ranging from 5 to 75 in age - has contributed a huge amount to the project. The whole of Brora Primary school came to visit, touring the archaeology and getting the opportunity to have a go themselves. The pupils, as well as the visitors to the open day, were able to see one of the project team, Ralph Shuttleworth, make salt using seawater and Brora coal. It is hoped that excavation at both the Old and New Salt works can continue next year.
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