Archaeology Notes

Event ID 851803

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/851803

NT37SE 78.00 centred 37349 73680

Mining Museum [NAT]

OS (GIS) MasterMap, September 2010.

NT37SE 78.01 NT 37303 73651 Pumping Engine

NT37SE 78.02 NT 373 736 Boiler

NT37SE 78.03 NT 371 738 Building

NT37SE 78.04 NT 37363 73679 Power Station

NT37SE 78.05 NT 37095 73593 Hoffman Kiln

NT37SE 78.06 NT 37104 73585 Chimney

See also NT37SE 79 Prestongrange brickworks. (Pump house and old generating station listed).

For adjacent and associated harbour of Morrison's Haven, see NT37SE 12.

Not to be confused with Scottish Mining Museum, Lady Victoria, Newtongrange (NT 333 637), for which see NT36SW 22.00.

Now a museum, under the Scottish Mining Museum Trust, and part of a 'coal trail'.

J R Baldwin 1985.

The remains of Prestongrange colliery and associated buildings are visible on a vertical air photograph (OS 85/015/28, flown 1985).

Information from RCAHMS.

(Location cited as NT 3728 7365). PRESTONGRANGE Colliery (also known as THE GRANGE)

Location: Prestonpans

Previous Owners: Originally the Grant Suttie family, and from 1874 the Prestongrange Coal and Iron Company. Taken over in 1895 by the Summerlee and Mossend Iron Company, which became the Summerlee Iron Company in 1898.

Types of Coal: Steam and House

Sinking/Production Commenced: from c.1820

Year Closed: 1962

Year Abandoned: 1963

Average Workforce: 686

Peak Workforce: 700

Peak Year: 1952

Shaft/Mine Details: 3 shafts, 115m, 166m, and 225m deep

Details in 1948: Output 670 tons per day, 167,000 tons per annum. 654 employees. Norton washer. Canteen (sandwich), ambulance room with ambulance. Power generated at colliery, but to be replaced by SE Scotland Electricity Board supply in September 1948. Report dated 15-07-1948.

Other Details: The beam engine for No. 1 shaft (which was built in Plymouth and survives as part of the museum, NT37SE 78.01) ) was bought from Harvey & Company of Hayle in Cornwall, and pumped water from the mineworkings from 1874 until 1954.

The pithead baths were completed in 1952 and were the 100th to be installed at Scottish collieries.

The colliery was greatly enlarged by the addition of a brick, tile and fireclay works in the 1890s, which operated until the 1970s. Following the mine's closure in the 1960s, it became a pioneering force behind the creation of the Scottish Mining Museum, of which it formed a major part along with Lady Victoria Colliery in neighbouring Midlothian. Following local authority re-organisation in the 1990s and the abolition of Lothian Region, Prestongrange became part of the East Lothian Museums Service, and remains open to the public as 'Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum'.

M K Oglethorpe 2006.