Harvested from the sea and produced using coal mined from the small pocket of Jurassic rock, Brora’s ‘white gold’ salt was a prized commodity which told its own story of Highland history.

First produced in 1598 in a remarkable example of female enterprise, the northeast village’s sea salt industry told its own story of Highland history, encompassing Jacobite rebellion and Highland clearances.

At its peak, Brora – five miles north of Golspie - was one of the nation’s leading and most northern producers of salt, with demand coming from as far afield as Denmark and London.

While the rich seams of highly combustible Jurassic coal fired the Sutherland village’s woollen mills, distilleries and brickworks, and even helped it become one of the first Highland towns to boast electric street lighting – earning Brora the nickname ‘Electric City’.

Brora – once the industrial capital of the Highlands – has become better known as a quiet stop off point for NC500 tourists heading north from nearby Dunrobin Castle, for its golf course and its Highland League title holders, Brora Rangers.

Now, however, the Sutherland community is preparing to turn back the clock, to recreate the traditional art of making sea salt for the first time in two centuries.

The salt will be produced just as it was hundreds of years ago, using coal found in the small seam below the ground to fire a furnace beneath large salt pans, gently heating the sea water until small salty crystals begin to appear on its surface.

The method was once common in the area, as landowners sought to make the most use of the area’s natural resources to meet demand for salt to preserve fish and meat, for the production of dairy goods and for a range of other uses.

From next month a team of volunteer ‘salters’ will be trained in the traditional methods by skilled salt makers from the 1772 Waggonway Project based at Cockenzie in East Lothian where, like at Brora, coal mined from the surrounding area was once used to fire furnaces to make the sea salt.

They will use a replica of an 18th century salt pan built by Macduff Shipyard in Buckie and constructed at Brora Heritage Centre.

While the sea salt will initially be produced on a small scale for demonstrations for local groups, visitors and schoolchildren, there are hopes that it might eventually expand and revive the area’s reputation as a salt-making centre.

According to Jacquie Aitken of Clyne Heritage Society, salt and coal built Brora’s reputation as an industrial powerhouse, even though few today would associate either with the picturesque Highland village.

“It’s an industry that Brora was very famous for, yet people normally associate coal with the central belt and carboniferous coal,” she said. “It sometimes surprises people to find out that there was coal at Brora.”

The first reference to coal in Brora is in a Sutherland Charter of 1529. Although the coal found in the area is volatile and prone to self-combustion due to the levels of iron pryites, coal mining continued on and off for over 450 years and fuelled a range of busy industries, including textiles, brick and tileworks, and distilling.

However, it was coal-fired salt production that propelled Brora to become an industrial capital, producing huge quantities that were sent around the country.

The salt pans were established by Lady Jean Gordon, Countess of Sutherland in 1598, some 200 years before the Industrial Revolution.

The first wife of Lord Bothwell - who went on to divorce her to marry Mary Queen of Scots - she was the tragic queen’s lady in waiting and confidant, as well as a powerful and enterprising figure who shatters the typical image of a 16th century lady.

“Lady Jean was formidable, she was a feminist, and as an estate manager was very capable of looking after the estate and initiating the salt pans and the coal mining,” says Jacquie.

“However, there were various family bereavements, her son passed away and the emphasis turned to trying to tutor his young son to become Earl in his own right, so the industries at Brora took a back step.

“Unfortunately, a few years after the industry went into demise in the 1620s, there was a huge need for salt, and salt-making really took off.”

Salt making in Brora re-emerged in the 18th century when money seized from estates that had supported Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rebellion was used to create Highland industries.

For ten years between 1767 and 1777, salt production and coal mining thrived in the area, before again withering away.

It was revived again in the early 19th century when the second Duke of Sutherland opened the Brora Colliery. Crofters were uprooted from agricultural land they had worked for generations to work in the mine, the town’s newly constructed harbour, brickyard, tileworks, distillery and salt pans.

The salt they produced was used by the herring fleets to preserve catches, in cheese and butter production, salmon and meat preservation and in chemical processes, such as the manufacture of glass.

At one point salt produced at Brora supplied almost all of the salt needed by all the villages along the shores of the Moray Firth, while out of 36 salt works across Scotland, Borar’s was the tenth largest.

“It was above average in Scotland for the amount of salt being produced,” adds Jacquie. “There are records from Jean Gordon’s time of salt being taken from Brora to London to be sold, another account in 1760s of it being taken to Portsoy in Aberdeenshire, and in the 1800s of 5000 bushels of salt being taken to Copenhagen.”

The removal of duty on foreign salt in 1823 led to the collapse of the small community’s salt industry. The salt pans closed and eventually just a glimpse of stone walls jutting from sand dunes on the beach were the only sign of what was once a massive industry.

In recent years, an excavation of the site has seen the sand scraped away to reveal the remnants of the old buildings believed to be a storeroom, office and workshop. The excavation revealed 16th century ‘graffiti’ believed to be apotropaic or anti-witch symbols and merchants’ marks, along with the earliest example of window glass in the Highland, thought to have been imported from France or Holland.

The Brora pit, the most northerly coal mine in the UK, eventually ceased operations in 1974 and the land where there was once thriving industries were cleared to become recreational grounds.

An event at Brora Heritage Centre will be held on Saturday, August 7, will see the first ‘salters’ in the area trained in the art of sea salt making for two centuries.

Although the sea salt was dubbed ‘white gold’, according to Jacquie there was no great fortune to be made from its production in Brora.

“So many things depended on salt making going right,” she says, “including whether the Sutherland and Caithness was fighting.

“There were great aspirations and outlays of money, but it was always short-lived and full of obstacles to overcome.”