The New Mine (1945 film)

A seventeen-minute British Council film of 1945, directed by Irene Wilson for GB Instructional, that showed the world Comrie Colliery in Fife as the model of a modern British pit, from the miners' canteen and lamp room to the coalface, the washery and the pithead baths.

The mining history in this record

Comrie Colliery was the Fife Coal Company's new showpiece pit, sunk in the late 1930s and drawing its first coal in 1939, and at the end of the Second World War it was chosen to stand for the modern British coal industry abroad. The British Council, which made films to present British life and industry overseas, sponsored The New Mine, produced by GB Instructional, directed by Irene Wilson and photographed by Frank North.

The film opens with general shots of coal mining and old pitheads before turning to Comrie: its pithead buildings, mining engineering classes and a safety lecture, the village, the canteen preparing the miners' food, and the men changing, collecting their numbered chits and cap lamps and entering the cage. Underground it shows the drilling and cutting of coal, testing for firedamp, the charging and firing of shots and a 'duck bill' loader filling steel tubs. At the surface the coal is weighed, tipped, graded, picked and washed, an aerial ropeway dumps the waste, and the shift ends in the miners' showers. Its narration calls the colliery 'the pit-head of the new world'.

People

Irene Wilson, director; Frank North, photography; GB Instructional, producers, for the British Council.

Legacy today

As a government film it is a public record, preserved by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives and free to watch on BFI Player; copies are also held by the National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive and by the Imperial War Museums. The BFI notes that the narration's hope that the mine would 'stand the test of time' was not borne out: Comrie closed in 1986. The most memorable shots, it says, are not the machinery but the miners queuing for the jam and cheese sandwiches that would carry them through the shift.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The New Mine was made in 1945 by GB Instructional for the British Council, directed by Irene Wilson with photography by Frank North; it runs 17 minutes. (documented fact) ^1,2,3
• The film shows the mining practices of Comrie Colliery in Fife, from the lamp room and cage to the coalface, the washery and the pithead showers. (documented fact) ²
• Its narration calls Comrie 'the pit-head of the new world' and imagines that the mine would 'stand the test of time'. (documented fact) ¹
• As a government film it is a public record, preserved by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives. (documented fact) ¹

Mines

• Comrie Colliery — Fife
  The film was shot at Comrie Colliery, Fife, in 1945 and presents it as a model modern pit.

Real-world mining concepts used here

Aerial Ropeway, Filler, Pithead, Pithead Baths, Washery

Sources

1. (secondary) The New Mine (BFI Player) — British Film Institute
2. (primary) NEW MINE, the (0297), Moving Image Archive catalogue — National Library of Scotland
3. (primary) THE NEW MINE (UKY 597), IWM Film — Imperial War Museums

Record created: 21 October 2026 · Last researched: 25 October 2026