EARLY SCOTTISH COLLIERIES

Evening Star, Issue 19412, 22 November 1926, Page 16

EARLY SCOTTISH COLLIERIES

It was on the East Lothian shore, where within recent weeks miners on strike have been reported to be working the outcrops, that coal was first discovered in Scotland (says the Edinburgh ‘Weekly Scotsman Early in the thirteenth century, on land between Pinkie and Prestonpans, owned by the monks of Dumfermline, the inroads of the sea disclosed the presence of this valuable mineral, and the Dumfermline brethren, assisted by the monks of Newbattle, it is said, were the pioneers to whom the credit is due for first working it. The “ coal heugh ”of Tranent appears to have been one of the earliest, if not the first colliery in Scotland, and it is possible that the coal referred to in the Royal accounts of the time came from this source. At Dysart, Largo, and at Bonnington, Linlithgow, collieries were operating during the fifteenth century; and in the century following many “ water-coal heughs ” were sunk along the shores of the Forth. In most cases these early collieries were operated by the landowners, but in one instance coal workings at Golmerton were leased in 1573 by James, fourth Lord Ross, to a villager named Heron, who contracted with the owner to work the coal on a profit-sharing basis, James VI., history tells us, unsuccessfully tried to stop the export of Scottish coal to countries other than England, fearing that the supply would “ decay.” That the pedant monarch was in error time has proved. The “decay” we know only too well has not been in the commodity.