Field Visit
Date 8 September 1993
Event ID 1112470
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1112470
The remains of Robolls Mine are situated on the W flank of Robolls Hill, overlooking the islet of Eilean Mhuireill in Loch Finlaggan. The remains comprise a drift mine, at least one shaft, an extensive area of linear opencast extraction, spoil dumps, subsidence pits, and one associated building, possibly a smithy.
The entrance to the drift mine is indicated by a long trench, cut into the hillside, with a lip of spoil to either side (NR 3883 6714). The rock-cut roof of the mine is still visible, but the entrance is now full of water. The spoil removed from the mine was dumped at the NW end of the trench, but has been levelled to provide a turning point for the modern track.
To the SE, above the modern track, there are a series of linear opencast quarries where the veins of lead have been exposed on the surface. Some appear to be no more than trial trenches, but others form much deeper linear scars, and, midway along one, there is what appears to be a shaft (NR 3894 6716). The mining remains all lie within a field-system of dykes enclosing plots of rig-and-furrow cultivation, and, although some of the workings appear to cut across the cultivation remains, at least one of the dykes crosses over an extraction trench and is clearly of a later date (See NR36NE 70).
Lying some 30m above the modern track, on the line of a cross-dyke to the W of the opencast workings, there are the remains of a two-compartment rectangular building measuring 8.7m from NW to SE by 3m transversely within ruinous stone walls. This building overlies the cross-dyke, from which much of its building stone has probably been derived.
Of the workings, only the drift mine is depicted on the 1st ed of the OS 6-inch map, where it is identified as a lead mine. The building is annotated as a smithy on the first edition of the OS 6-inch map (Island of Islay, Argyllshire, Sheet cxcviii, 1882).
Visited by RCAHMS (ARW/SPH) 8 September 1993.
R M Callender and J Macaulay 1984.
