Archaeology Notes

Event ID 708549

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/708549

NS98NE 9 9820 8541

(Name: NS 9820 8541) The Moat (NR)

(17th Century Coal Shaft) (NAT)

OS 6" map, (1967)

The Moat was an entrance to a coal pit built by Sir George Bruce at the beginning of the 17th century. It was a shaft sunk in the sea a short distance below high water mark, encased with three concrete walls which rose above the surface of the water. It was visited in 1617 by James Vl, but later the same year was destroyed by a storm and never used again. About 1790 the stones from the walls were taken to Leith to build the pier there. A heap of stones is all that can be seen, at low tide. (Name Book 1859)

Name Book 1859; A Jervise 1859; A W Hallen 1878; D Beveridge 1885.

Site recorded by Maritime Fife during the Coastal Assessment Survey for Historic Scotland, Kincardine to Fife Ness 1996.

MS/2307/2.

The remains of the Moat Pit is situated just below the high water mark on the foreshore at Culross. Sunk in the 17th century, it comprises a stone-lined shaft protected from the sea by a substantial breakwater, all now reduced to the lower courses. Circular on plan, the breakwater measures 15.2m in overall diameter and is faced externally with rough blocks that lie back into the rubble fill behind. The mouth of the shaft lies at the centre and measure 4.2m in internal diameter. Its stone lining is constructed as a freestanding wall some 0.85m in thickness and still stands at last 0.8m high in three courses. The lower courses comprise two skins of closely fitting blocks, whereas the uppermost, only surviving in the NE, is a tie course made up of single slabs 0.9m in length laid across the thickness of the wall.

The mine worked the Upper Hirst coal seam and was presumably interconnected with other shafts and galleries operated on the shore. When it was operational, the breakwater would have stood considerably more than the 4.8m (15 feet 9 inches) in height needed to ensure the mouth of the shaft cleared the high tide, and would have provided a working platform for loading sailing ships with coal and for ventilation and pumping. It is noted that Sir George Bruce appears to have installed a pump comprising wooden buckets on a continuous chain suspended from a windlass at the mouth of the shaft. It was probably deliberately demolished during the 17th to 19th centuries for building materials and it is also possible that some of the rubble from the breakwater was used to block the shaft after it was abandoned due to severe flood damage in 1625.

Nearby sit two roughed-out mill stones which measure about 1.0m in diameter. They are possibly dumped ballast from a ship.

Visited by RCAHMS (MMD/SH), 30 May 2008.