Sketch of Blantyre Colliery

Blantyre Colliery, Lanarkshire, opened in 1865 and owned by W Dixon and Co Ltd., was the scene of ‘one of those terrible fire-damp explosions’ in 1877 when 207 miners were killed, the worst pit disaster of its kind in Scotland.

The neat low row of miners’ cottages had back gardens for growing vegetables or keeping livestock. The colliery’s waste tip or ‘bing’, the pit headgear above No.2 shaft and the chimney for the steam boiler form the background to the village.

Philip Murray, a pitboy from Blantyre Colliery, Lanarkshire, became the leader of the iron and steelworkers’ trade union of America, and the president of the Congress of Industrial Organisation. He died in 1953.