Bothwell Castle 3 and 4 Colliery, also known as Priory Colliery, was owned by William Baird and Company. Despite the castle name, it WAS on the Blantyre side of the river, but pits 1 and 2 were on Bothwell side. Priory Collier had two shafts, sunk in 1889 to a depth of 1,344 feet, and […]
Tag: coal
Priory Coal Mining Pit
I like to think of coal as the “saviour of Blantyre”. By the late 1860’s the mills that had put Blantyre on the map were starting to decline. Modern milling techniques had lost many jobs and competition was fierce. Indeed, if coal hadn’t been found in Blantyre that decade, the town would have likely declined […]
Mining in & around the town
In 1791 it was stated – “On the banks of the Calderwater, which divides the Blantyre parish from Kilbride, has of late been discovered a vast quantity of iron ore”, and this was carried to a furnace in Glasgow to be made into pig iron there. By 1835, limestone was also mined at Auchintibber, (about […]