NAMHO 2008
EDINBURGH
The Venue
This year the conference
is being hosted at the Lady Victoria Colliery, part of the Scottish Mining Museum.
http://www.scottishminingmuseum.com/
Coal has been central to the story of
Scotland over much of the past two centuries. By the early years of the 1900s, nearly 150,000 people were
directly employed in Scotland's mining industry, out of a total population at
the time of around 4.5 million. Scotland's coal industry produced over 40
million tons of coal each year. By the
time the industry was nationalised in 1946, direct employment was down to around 80,000 people in 300 mines,
producing around 23 million tons of coal each year. By 1980, the equivalent figures were 20,000
employees, 7 million tons production, and around 30 mines. Today the only coal extracted in Scotland comes from open cast sites,
and there are no deep mines in production.
Lady Victoria Colliery in Newtongrange was sunk
in 1895. It employed a maximum of 1,765
people at its peak in 1953 and
closed in 1981. Unlike almost all other
Scottish collieries, most of the above-ground buildings at Lady Victoria were retained after its closure, although
the shaft and other below-ground works were filled in. The role of the Scottish Mining Museum is to
ensure that the role and national significance of the industry, and the impact
it had on the lives of those who lived in mining communities, is never forgotten. It also serves as the custodian of the
national collections and archives relating to the mining industry in Scotland. As a result it cares for
over 60,000 items ranging from large
scale mining machinery and locomotives to personal equipment, documents, and
over 14,000 photographs.
The Scottish Mining Museum includes a superb
three-storey visitor centre, shop and cafe, winding engine house, coal
preparation plant. The upper floors
contain a wealth of interactive displays, reconstructions, and sound and visual
exhibits to tell "The Story of Coal" and mining communities. There is the "Magic Helmets" tour, complete with headphones,
that gives information about the different areas visited and the items on view. The focal point of the tour is the series of
walkways around the "Tub
Circuit and Pithead". Here, tubs
full of coal were brought to the surface and marshalled. You can also look into the top of the
filled-in shaft, which was once over 500m or 1500ft deep.
Although Lady Victoria Colliery no longer
has underground workings, visitors tour a highly atmospheric recreation of an underground roadway and
coalface built above ground in part of the colliery. This gives an excellent impression of the sorts of conditions miners worked
in, though without the levels of dust and noise they would have had to put up with day after day. As well as the normal tours on offer up to 3.30pm each day, visitors can also take
one of the "Big Stuff' tours that take place twice a week and include the museum's collection of heavy
equipment, or make arrangements to study the museum's archives.
Last updated 2nd February 2008