Auldhouseburn Colliery inundation, 1898

Men cross-cutting eastward in the Bankhead pit of Auldhouseburn Colliery holed into the flooded workings of the long-abandoned Crossflat pit on the morning of Friday 11 March 1898. The water rose twelve feet in the shaft and cut off nineteen men in the steep rise workings above the main roadway. Three who had been working near the roadway and had time to act on the warning were overwhelmed and drowned. The other sixteen were brought out alive the next morning after a night and a day underground, led by the fireman Robert Blyth, who stayed with them and then swam the flooded roadway neck-deep to ring the pit bell.

Cause

A cross-cut driven east from the workings holed into the flooded workings of the abandoned Crossflat pit, without boreholes being kept in advance of the face as General Rule 13 required.

Contributing factors

The Crossflat workings had been bored into and drained four or five months earlier and were believed safe to approach, and the extent of the old mine appears to have been misjudged.

What happened

About fifty men worked the pit, and forty-five went down between six and seven that morning, due back at half past ten. Much of the coal was worked out and the cross-cut was being driven east towards Crossflat Colliery, an Eglinton Iron Company pit abandoned some fifteen years before and standing full of water a quarter of a mile away. Four or five months earlier a bore had been put through to it and the water drained into Auldhouseburn and pumped away, on the understanding that the old workings could then be approached safely. Shortly after nine o'clock John Macmillan, who had started work at that face only that morning, noticed water trickling from rock that had been dry minutes before. He sent for his neighbour, who said the water was new to him, and then for the section fireman, and decided not to fire his shot until someone in authority had seen it. Sitting about three feet from the hole, he heard a noise and the water burst through, lifting him off his feet, carrying him before it and blowing out his lamp. He groped his way clear in the dark and raised the alarm. Men nearest the shaft reached it dry shod; those further out came through water to the knees and waist, and Gibson the bottomer stood at his post until he was in to the armpits, sending twenty-three men up before he seized a boy who had been carried off his feet, got through a trap door and reached the shaft by an old road. A lad named McGladderie lost his footing and was pulled out by his comrades. Hutches, props and at least one pony were swept down the braes in the flood. Robert Blyth, the fireman, was near the pit bottom when the water came in. He set the men in the lower workings running, shook his brother's hand, said he was off to the rise and had his duty to do, and made his way up through the torrent to warn the eighteen men working above. He was not seen again for nearly twenty-four hours, and those at the surface assumed the worst. The workings he had gone to rose at between one in three and one in six and stood as much as 200 feet above the main roadway, which is why the manager believed from the first that the men would be alive if they had not panicked into the water.

Rescue & recovery

The manager, John Shaw, set both pumps going and had water chests rigged on the cage, and kept them going without a break; the pit's equipment was out of all proportion to its size and the water fell at about eight inches an hour and a half. An attempt to reach the men through the Crossflat shaft got about a hundred fathoms and was stopped by water; a second attempt to drive through old workings from seventeen fathoms below the shaft bottom was too slow to be worth continuing. Hundreds stood at the pithead through the night around braziers of coal, and the village kept its lights on. Underground, Blyth gathered sixteen men in the rise workings, where the returning air was fresh, and made them stay put. They collected what coats they had and huddled under them, burned two lamps at a time and lit two more only as those failed, and shared two flasks of cold tea which Blyth took into his own keeping and warmed over a lamp about midnight when he judged the men were flagging. When he saw the water falling he tried twice to reach the shaft and failed; at the third attempt he waded it with the water at his chin, reached the bottom and rang the bell as the water kists came up. He was raised at a quarter to eight on the Saturday morning. Half an hour later William Dempster and Hugh English, the two tallest of the party, made the same passage; the blacksmith Hugh Murdoch and the sinker William Gibson then went down to bring the rest, and within an hour all sixteen were at the surface. The pit surgeon and a second doctor had waited at the pithead throughout and found nothing to do but send the men home to bed. The three missing men were found at two o'clock that afternoon by a party under Andrew Pearson, assistant inspector of mines, in four feet of water about twenty yards from the shaft bottom, in a place known as the cube, tangled in floating timber that took half an hour to clear. They had been working near the main roadway and had heard the warning in time to move, and were caught by the rush as they made for the shaft. The bodies were carried home on stretchers by their workmates, across the Ayr and up into the town. The three were buried publicly on the Tuesday, with intimations read from every church in Muirkirk.

Investigation & inquiry

J. M. Ronaldson, H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines for the west of Scotland, reached Muirkirk on the evening of the disaster and stayed through the pumping. On 30 March 1898 Sheriff Orr Paterson and a jury held a formal inquiry at Ayr; on the sheriff's direction the jury found that the influx of water was due to a failure to observe Rule 13 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, the general rule requiring boreholes to be kept in advance of the working face where old workings may be approached. The Durham Mining Museum's record of the three deaths, drawn from Ronaldson's own 1898 report, gives the same cause in the same terms. The Scotsman's first reports had suggested a miscalculation about the extent of the abandoned Crossflat workings, either an error in the cross-cutting or an unrecorded extension of the old mine.

Legal & regulatory aftermath

At a special meeting the Royal Humane Society, on evidence furnished by Sir William Arrol, M.P. for South Ayrshire, awarded its medals to Robert Blyth of Bankhead, then twenty-nine, and to Robert Gibson of Smallburn, who had tried to force his way through the flood to warn the men in the higher section and been driven back. The colliery went on working and was abandoned in 1911.

Memorials & commemoration

No memorial to the three men has been found. The miners' memorial in Muirkirk Heritage Park, opened in 2003, commemorates the Muirkirk and Glenbuck miners as a whole.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Three men drowned: John Hazel, William Gemmell and James Shaw. The Durham Mining Museum's list, taken from the Inspector's report, gives the names as John Hazel, aged 33, William Gennell, aged 47, and James Straw, aged 20, so the surnames of two of the three are spelt differently in the official list and the newspaper reports. (disputed) ^1,2
• The Scotsman gives James Shaw as seventeen and the mainstay of a widowed mother; the Durham Mining Museum's list gives his age as twenty. (disputed) ^1,2
• Nineteen men were cut off in the rise workings; sixteen were brought out alive after roughly twenty-four hours underground, and the newspaper compilation describes them as entombed for twelve hours. (disputed) ^2,3
• The jury at the sheriff's inquiry on 30 March 1898 found, on the sheriff's direction, that the influx of water was due to a failure to observe Rule 13 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, which required boreholes to be kept in advance of the face. ^1,2
• The Royal Humane Society awarded medals to Robert Blyth and Robert Gibson for risking their lives to save their fellow workmen. ²

Related terminology

Mining terms this disaster is structurally linked to, with the nature of the relationship.

• Cannel Coal (contextual relationship)
  The seam being worked was a three-foot cannel coal lying with a four-foot ordinary coal, the cannel being much of what the company sold for gas making.
• Fathom (contextual relationship)
  Named twice in this record, first in the rescue and recovery: “…to reach the men through the Crossflat shaft got about a hundred fathoms and was stopped by water; a second attempt to drive through old…”
• Fireman (contextual relationship)
  Named 3 times in this record, first in the summary: “…the next morning after a night and a day underground, led by the fireman Robert Blyth, who stayed with them and then swam the flooded roadway…”
• Inrush (direct cause)
  The inrush came from the abandoned and water-filled Crossflat workings when the cross-cut holed into them without boreholes kept in advance.
• Room and Pillar (relevant method/equipment)
  The pit was worked stoop and room, the Scottish name for room and pillar, and the steep rise workings left by it were where the sixteen survivors sheltered.

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this disaster.

Sources

1. (secondary) Auldhouseburn Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Bankhead Pit, Auldhouseburn 11 March 1898 — Scottish Mining Website
3. (secondary) The Bankhead Pit Disaster, compiled by James Taylor — Ayrshire History

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026