Brief history of our site

Here you'll find a brief history of our Tranent site - it's had a long and varied past!

Before we moved to our Tranent site we were located in the village of Inveresk, just outside Musselburgh and were called Inveresk Research. To the right is a picture of our first office at Inveresk House back in 1947. At that time we were known as the Scottish Seaweed Research Centre as we started off researching seaweed.

Seaweed was a pretty big deal back in 1947 as the following extract from a contemporary newspaper report shows - 

“HERE, Scotland has a chance. Eire, Norway America, Japan, have all, in varying ways, exploited their seaweed resources. We are only at the beginning, and this splendid research station gives us the opportunity not only of making up on these countries, but of surpassing them.” So declared the Right Hon. Joseph Westwood, Secretary of State for Scotland, when, on September 19, he officially opened the headquarters of the Scottish Seaweed Research Association—the Institute of Seaweed Research, Inveresk Gate, Musselburgh, Midlothian. Until recently a large mansion house, Inveresk Gate now contains adequate botanical, chemical, engineering and photographic laboratories, engineering workshops, a drawing office, a library, and conference and display rooms, apart from the necessary offices. The Institute stands in eleven acres of ground, and is situated sufficiently near Edinburgh, the University, and the sea to meet the Association's various needs." 

This is the first page of the visitor’s book from 1947, showing some special visitors. Among those present were the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Provost of the Burgh of Musselburgh.

So that was a little bit history about how we started out as a company. Here's some information about what was on this site before Charles River.

This site was Fleets Colliery which was almost at the centre of the East Lothian coal field.  The pit started in the 1850s with the No.1 pit sunk into the Great Seam right under our Lecture Room! 

This picture shows the extent of the industrial nature of the site with some major buildings covering the entire area.

An interesting fact about Fleet Colliery is that it was the first pit in Scotland to provide cleaning facilities.  Before then, miners would have arrived home filthy and had to try and clean themselves over a sink or in a tin bath in front of the fire.

The baths were opened on 31 July 1937 and were built by the Miner’s Welfare Committee and the Miner’s Welfare Fund.

As you can see we have gone through quite a few changes since the mine works. 

Aerial shot of the Tranent site from around 1975. You can see at the bottom the original cottage (used as a store) from the mining days.

Aerial shot of the Tranent site today.