Elgin And Wellwood Colliery

NT08NE 177.01 centred 0876 8942

ELGIN and WELLWOOD (also known as Leadside)

Location: by Dunfermline

Previous Owners: Thomas Spowart & Company

Types of Coal: House, Manufacturing and Steam

Sinking/Production Commenced: 1827

Year Closed: 1950

Year Abandoned: 1950

Average Workforce: 214

Peak Workforce: 214

Peak Year: 1947

Shaft/Mine Details: 1 shaft, 73m deep

Details in 1948: Output 220 tons per day, 55,750 tons per annum. 242 employees. Dickson and Mann bash tank washer (system for cleaning coal). Canteen (packed meals and teas). Steam and electricity, latter supplied by Fife Electric Power Company. Report dated 11-08-1948.

Other Details: Elgin merged with Wellwood between 1869 and 1880. Associated brickworks, operating from 1934 to 1981. Closure in 1950 caused by a pithead fire, many miners being moved to Aitken (NT19SE 33). Wellwood situated at NT0965 8912 (NT08NE 295).

RCAHMS 2006

Further information from Ronald Watt, a management trainee with the NCB, and economist who worked in HQ Stats Dept, where he operated the record book on colliery closures:

Elgin colliery was further to the west, from Baldridge, Pittencrieff up to Wallsend and it is thought to have started before 1827.

The Elgins gave up operational control of the Elgin colliery in the mid-18th century because of bank pressure on their debt. At the end of the 19th century a diffrent colliery company, Nimmo, took over Wallsend (also operating Rosebank and some other pits).

Leadside was the last pit to operate in Wellwood Colliery and was commonly called Wellwood. When reviewed by the NCB in 1949 for 'A Plan for Coal' it had only a couple of years reserves left, so the fire in 1950 proved to be the end.

However, it was a pithead fire, probably caused by an angry, inadequate worker, not an underground fire, and the NCB decided it would not be worth trying to repair it. So ended deep coal mining around Dunfermline.

19th February 2007 (email to Mark Watson of Historic Scotland)