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Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1016149
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016149
The Lothian Coal Company began to sink the Lady Victoria shaft in 1890. Originally planned to reach 531 m, uncontrollable flooding caused it to be backfilled to 503 m. The original block of buildings still survives - brick-built furnace house, winding-engine house and ancillary buildings. Seven of the second set of 12 'Lancashire' boilers remain in position, producing steam until 1982 to help power underground machinery as well as the pit-head baths and the winding-engine.
High above the colliery stand the twin symbols of a late 19th-mid 20th century colliery - the brick-built chimney and the pit-head gantry supporting the pulley wheels over which the winding-ropes passed down to the cages. The winding-engine house was the heart of the colliery. Like the original rope-drum, the present winding-engine was built by Grant Ritchie & Co Ltd,
of Kilmarnock in 1894. A massive piece of machinery, it hissed and clanked, pistons gradually turning as it began to let out or haul in the thick wire ropes. It survived as a dinosaur into the age of microelectronics, and has now become extinct, though preserved.
The Lothian Coal Company had been headed by the Marquis of Lothian, descendant of the last abbot of Newbattle, Mark Ker, who secularised his mining interests after the Reformation. To house the miners for his new pit, called after his wife, the Marquis established a company village. Built of brick from the local brickworks, Newtongrange was to become the largest pit village in Scotland. The terraced houses were laid out in a grid pattern and named accordingly - First Street, Second Street .. ; each had its flower garden in front and vegetable garden behind, with outdoor dry closet. The Company also built miners' institutions with reading rooms and libraries, football pitches and bowling greens.
Nearby Rosewell (NT 288627) is one of the most complete pit villages to survive, built even more distinctively in yellow as well as red brick. Its Roman Catholic Church, St Matthew's (1926) is built of the same yellow, industrial brick.
Information from 'Exploring Scotland's Heritage, Lothian and Borders',(1985)
