SIXTY years ago, the county’s industrial balance was tilted heavily to the west. There, there were a series of coal mines, surrounded by villages and towns for miners that worked them. They were continuing a tradition dating back to the 12th century.

The rest of the county was rural, especially the coastal strip between Barns Ness lighthouse and Dunglass Dean, which was so sleepy back then that British Rail closed the local station.

Sixty years on, our mines are all gone, replaced by commuter suburbs. Our three biggest industrial enterprises are now all on that once-sleepy coastal strip. A long-abandoned lime kiln next to Skateraw beach hints there was once more than agriculture here. It was a hint of what was to come.

Oxwell Mains Lime Works once lay inland. But they were long gone when Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Limited (later Blue Circle Industries PLC) broke ground on the same site in 1962. Starting with South Quarry (1962-71), narrow-gauge engines hauled limestone to a central crusher and kiln complex. These are now fed by conveyer belts from successive quarries. The little engines retired, although one is still at work – in Malaysia. British Rail opened sidings off the East Coast Main Line to haul cement away in hopper cars. The John Gray Centre holds colour photographs telling the story of how the plant was built.

After decades developing new quarries, even shifting the A1 out of the way, Viridor, a specialist waste firm, secured a 23-year contract to dispose of waste from across Lothian, using exhausted quarries as landfill sites. Because of the volume of Edinburgh’s waste, trains load at Powderhall terminal and run direct to Oxwellmains for minimal environmental impact.

This symbiotic relation with (since 2015) Tarmac worked well. Viridor saw a chance to extend this by applying to build an energy-from-waste plant, able to process 300,000 tonnes a year, including from outside Lothian. This would increase the lifetime of the site, but the application was rejected by East Lothian Council. But an appeal to Scottish Ministers succeeded in overturning this and the £177m plant was completed in 2018.

Along with EDF’s Torness Power Station (on-stream since 1988), this once-sleepy corner of our county means we produce half of Scotland’s electricity, dispose of a quarter of its waste and supply all of its cement – as far from our traditional industrial base as you could get. And it is all hidden ‘round the corner’ by Doon Hill and The Brunt, so visitors coming from the rest of Lothian don’t even know all this is there.