Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 589766
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/589766
Lady Victoria Colliery is considered the most complete example of a late-19th century model in Europe. It is the only coherent coal-mining complex to have survived in Scotland following the cessation of deep mining in 2002, and is all the more important because of its situation on the edge of Scotland’s finest mining village, Newtongrange.
At the time of its sinking by the Lothian Coal Company in the early 1890s, its shaft was thought to be the largest diameter and deepest in the country, and was designed to extract 1200 tons of coal per day. This was achieved by a 2400 hp steam winding engine built by Grant Ritchie of Kilmarnock, in combination with a substantial steel headframe constructed by Sir William Arrol & Co. of Glasgow in 1893. At ground level, the pithead buildings comprise a central block of mostly red-brick arcades through which sidings from the adjacent Waverley line passed, allowing coal to be rapidly dispatched to markets in Edinburgh, and to mill towns in the Borders. The upper levels contain the mine-car circuit, coal-picking tables, and a coal preparation plant. Following the closure of the colliery in 1981 the site was conserved as the Scottish Mining Museum thus retaining its most important elements for posterity and providing a major public visitor attraction. An unusual surviving ‘bridge’ element is the reinforced concrete walkway over the A7 trunk road. This facility connected the pithead with the baths and canteen on the opposite side of the road. It was designed by National Coal Board Scottish Region’s Austrian architect, Egon Riss, who was also responsible for designing the new generation of superpits in Scotland (such as Rothes in Fife, Killoch in Ayrshire, and Bilston Glen nearby in Midlothian), as well as the prestigious reconstructions at Kinneil (Bo’ness) and Barony (Auchinleck).
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
