Archaeology Notes

Event ID 716543

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/716543

NT37SE 78.01 37303 73651.

See NT37SE 78.00.

(Location cited as NT 373 737 and name as Prestongrange Pumping Engine). The sole surviving beam pumping engine in Scotland. A 70ins (1.77m) Cornish engine built by Harvey of Hayle for the Summerlee Iron Co in 1874; it was enlarged in 1895, when the cast-iron beam was strengthened. The engine is being restored as the centrepiece of a museum of mining. The former power station of the colliery, a single-storey brick building with round-headed windows, has been reroofed and is at present being used to display dismantled machinery, oending display. Nearby are the remains of a stoneware pipeworks.

J R Hume 1976.

Beam engine at Prestongrange Colliery, near the coast road... Cornish type, ie. the sort of engine that was used to pump water from the deep Cornish tin mines. On the door, the inscription MH (Harvey & Co. of Hayle, Cornwall), 1874. The capacity of the pump was increased in 1895 to 900 gallons (4000 lit.) a minute and it went on working till the closure of the colliery in 1952, a century after its opening.

C McWilliam 1978.