Mine water as a Renewable Energy Resource - Promoscene

Midlothian
Coal has been mined in Midlothian for centuries. The
industry brought prosperity for some, but working
conditions for miners were tough and dangerous. Now the
region faces a cleaner, ‘greener’ future...
The monks of Newbattle Abbey are known to have
been digging coal from the ground in the Thirteenth
Century. After the Reformation and the dissolution of the
monasteries (1536-1540), mining was taken over by the
big landowners. They developed the pits as commercial
enterprises. Thanks to coal, the Forth Estuary became one
of the busiest trading areas in the British Isles and a centre
of the salt industry.
The pits and salt pans were dangerous and unpleasant
places. To make sure that there were enough people to do
the work, the Scottish Parliament passed a law in 1606
that tied colliers and salters to their overlords – like serfs or
slaves. The law was not repealed until 1799, and it affected
the relationship between landowners and miners long after.
The iron industry came to Lanarkshire when hot blast
smelting was invented. Coal fuelled this new industry, and
thousands of miners were needed. Many of the jobs were
filled by Irish immigrants and other European refugees who
were fleeing famine.
In Lanarkshire and West Lothian the new booming business
created a revolution in the old master/slave relationship. In
Midlothian and East Lothian the old order held sway. The
old landowners operated cartels to keep prices artificially
high. The city of Edinburgh’s answer was to build the Union
Canal to bring in coal from the west.
In 1840 a Parliamentary Commission found many women
and children being used to carry huge loads of coal out of
the steep mines in the central and eastern region, but they
found hardly any in the western region. They criticised this
remnant of slavery and new legislation in 1842 banned
women, and girls and boys under ten from working
underground.
Fig A5: Midlothian Mining Museum
Fig A4: Shawfair Development
Appendix A: Community and heritage at the pilot locations
At the end of the Nineteenth Century the big Lanarkshire
companies expanded to the east. Smaller family businesses
could not match these aggressive entrepreneurs, and
one by one they were swallowed up or amalgamated
with others to form local coal companies. It was only in
the Twentieth Century that the small-scale coal industry
in Mid- and East Lothian became one of the centres of
Scottish coal mining industry.
In 1947 the National Coal Board took control of the pits.
In order to meet the needs of post-War industry, the Coal
Board looked for new coal resources and found these in
the Esk Basin. The small villages in Midlothian suddenly
grew, with a large influx of people from the west. The
County Council faced both housing and social problems.
New showpiece pits at Bilston Glen and Monktonhall were
among many other new mines in the area. Since closure
of the mines there is now a large area of brownfield land
around the site itself, but all the colliery buildings have
been demolished and the site has been levelled. There
is considerable vegetation covering the site; some of
it having been planted to screen operations while the
colliery was working, and some natural growth.
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