I faced a choice for today’s photo: a Mesolithic Chambered Cairn or a Neolithic Stone Circle. Both tempting, both suitably mysterious. But they can wait. Instead, here is Sponish House, a 19th-century structure crouched on the shore of Loch Nam Madadh. Built for Lord Macdonald’s chamberlain or sheriff, it later served as a sporting lodge. In 1956, it took on an unlikely new life as the hub of a seaweed processing factory. Then came a fire, leaving it gutted and abandoned. Recently re-roofed, it looks empty and forlorn, though curiously sprouting two satellite dishes1Sponish House. Canmore ID 17155 http://canmore.org.uk/site/171559.
The real curiosity here is that factory. Most know about the kelp boom around 1815—crofters harvesting seaweed, landowners raking in profits, rents paid in dried weed. But seaweed processing still happening in the 1950s? That came as a surprise. It opens a door to a largely forgotten story.
In the 20th century, scientists found a way to extract alginates from ordinary seaweed. Factories appeared across the Uists, including here at Sponish. Crofters would gather seaweed thrown ashore in winter, dry it, and sell it to these operations. The processed product had a range of uses: camouflage nets in the war, ice cream, industrial chemicals, animal feed, and fertilisers.
Sponish House became a centre for it. The manager lived upstairs. The office and stores filled the ground floor and basement. The factory itself went up in the walled garden, built from the garden walls. A pier was added in the bay for puffers, those squat little cargo boats that once chugged around the Highlands and Islands. They brought in coal for the furnaces and carried the meal out to Girvan. In 1956, the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh paid a visit.
But the seaweed factory closed. A cement firm moved in, then went bankrupt. The house changed hands, the factory was pulled down.
Seaweed processing still continues elsewhere in the islands, but the ghosts at Sponish House remain.
Further reading:
History of Seaweed Collection and its Processing in North and South Uist. July 27, 2020. Uist Asco. https://www.uistasco.com/history-of-seaweed-collection-and-its-processing-in-north-and-south-uist/
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