Auldhouseburn Colliery

Overview

A gas and steam coal pit half a mile south-east of Muirkirk, across the River Ayr, worked from about 1871 by the Cairntable Gas Coal Company and abandoned in 1911. It was a small colliery, between 77 and 145 men on the Lists of Mines, taking a seven-foot seam of cannel and ordinary coal at about 25 fathoms by stoop and room, with workings that climbed as much as 200 feet above the main roadway. Those steep rise workings saved sixteen lives in March 1898, when the men cross-cutting eastward holed into the flooded workings of the abandoned Crossflat pit and three men drowned. Its bing still stands between the dismantled railway and the remains of the Muirkirk canal.

History

Coal had been worked at Auldhouseburn long before this colliery: the Muirkirk Iron Company took coal and ironstone from the ground here from the 1780s to feed the Muirkirk ironworks, and the canal that carried it west to the furnaces ran past the site. The pit recorded here is the later and separate undertaking. It was originally the property of Thomas Barr of Glasgow, who in 1871 formed a public company named after the neighbouring height of Cairn Table, and the Durham Mining Museum's list of owners runs Barr and Co., J. C. Simpson, and the Cairntable Gas Coal Company and its limited successor, with offices at 75 Bothwell Street in Glasgow and Barr as managing director. A collier of seventeen, Charles Clark, fell down the thirty-two fathom shaft while making repairs in November 1873, which puts the pit at work by then. It was never large. The Lists of Mines give 145 men in 1894, 77 in 1896, 79 in 1900, 131 in 1905 and 118 in 1910, working the Nine Feet and Seven Feet seams for gas and steam coal, a large proportion of the output going for gas manufacture as the company's name suggests. Muirkirk itself was a town the iron trade had made, with the Eglinton Iron Company's furnaces, rolling mills and surrounding pits employing most of the inhabitants and a population of about 4,000 by the time of the disaster. To house Auldhouseburn's own men a row was built immediately west of the Bankhead cottages. By 1898 much of the pit was worked out and the men were cross-cutting eastward towards Crossflat Colliery, an Eglinton Iron Company pit abandoned about fifteen years before and standing full of water a quarter of a mile away. A bore had been put through from one to the other four or five months earlier and the water drained into Auldhouseburn and pumped out, and the Crossflat workings were believed safe to approach. On the morning of 11 March 1898 the cross-cut holed into them and the water came in, drowning three men and trapping nineteen more in the high workings for a night and a day (see Disasters, below). The sheriff and jury who inquired into it found the inrush was due to a failure to observe Rule 13 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, the rule requiring boreholes to be kept in advance of the face. The colliery worked on for another thirteen years and was abandoned in 1911.

Geology

The pit worked the coals of the Ayrshire part of the Scottish Coal Measures, which the Ordnance Gazetteer describes as lying on both sides of the Ayr valley at Muirkirk at no great depth, six seams aggregating over thirty feet. Here two of them lay together: a seam of cannel coal three feet thick and one of ordinary coal four feet, separated only by a band of stone, so that the working was in effect a single seam seven feet thick. The Lists of Mines record the seams by their Scottish names, the Nine Feet and the Seven Feet.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

Stoop and room working at about 25 fathoms, reached by a shaft the 1873 fatality record puts at 32 fathoms. The workings were exceptionally steep, rising at between one in three and one in six and reaching as much as 200 feet above the level of the main roadway — the feature that gave the trapped men somewhere to go in 1898. The pit was known in the district as a wet one and was equipped out of all proportion to its size: two pumps of 16 and 13 or 14 inches, two water chests or kists rigged to the cage, and a dam built to the south-west about 1894 which cut the water making into the workings by 300 to 400 gallons a minute. Haulage underground was by hutches in races on a dook. A siding of the mineral railway operated by William Baird and Company served the pit, and the older Muirkirk canal ran past it.

Closure

Abandoned in 1911, thirteen years after the inundation, on the Canmore record of the site. No account of the reason for the closure has been found.

What remains

Canmore records the shaft and the pithead buildings as having stood west of the road opposite a sharp bend, and as now buried beneath two long fingers of spoil dumped from a sand quarry to the south. The colliery's own bing survives between the dismantled railway and the remains of the canal and is the most conspicuous thing left; unlike most of the spoil dumps around Muirkirk it does not show the barrow-run pattern but a dimpled surface, and it is drawn on the second edition Ordnance Survey 25-inch map at about a quarter of its present size, having been extended south around the foot of a natural rise.

The bing; the brick footings of the miners' row built west of the Bankhead cottages; the earthworks of the water system that took water from the Auldhouse Burn to the farm and the pit, which probably drove a threshing mill at one and a pump at the other; and, close by, the piers of the Auldhouseburn viaduct that carried the Caledonian Railway's Muirkirk line.

Related mines

• Glenbuck Colliery — The Cairntable Gas Coal Company owned pits at Glenbuck three miles east as well as Auldhouseburn, and its Glenbuck output was the larger of the two; officials from the Glenbuck property came over to help during the 1898 inundation.
• Muirkirk Collieries — The Muirkirk Iron Company worked coal and ironstone at Auldhouseburn from the 1780s and its canal ran past the site; this colliery is the later Cairntable Gas Coal Company pit on the same ground.

Nearby mines

• Muirkirk Collieries — 0.8 km W
• Kames Colliery — 1.9 km S
• Glenbuck Colliery — 4.0 km NE
• Gasswater Mine — 7.1 km SW
• Auchlochan Colliery — 9.7 km NE, South Lanarkshire

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Disasters & major incidents

• Auldhouseburn Colliery inundation, 1898
  11 March 1898 · Flooding / Inundation · 3 fatalities
  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.

Recorded claims

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

• The pit was Thomas Barr's own property before he formed the Cairntable Gas Coal Company in 1871, taking the name from the hill of Cairn Table; the company also held pits at Glenbuck with a larger output. ^1,2
• The pit was about 25 fathoms deep and worked stoop and room in a seam of about seven feet, made up of a three-foot cannel coal and a four-foot ordinary coal separated by stone. A shaft depth of 32 fathoms is recorded in the 1873 fatality of Charles Clark, and the 1910 List of Mines names the seams as Nine Feet and Seven Feet. (uncertain) ^1,2
• The colliery was abandoned in 1911. ³
• The pit was known as a wet one and carried pumps of 16 and 13 or 14 inches and two water chests, equipment described at the time as abnormally great for its size; a dam built to the south-west about 1894 cut the water making into the workings by 300 to 400 gallons a minute. ^2,4

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Auldhouseburn Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Bankhead Pit, Auldhouseburn 11 March 1898 — Scottish Mining Website
3. (primary) Auldhouseburn (Canmore ID 76374) — Historic Environment Scotland
4. (secondary) The Bankhead Pit Disaster, compiled by James Taylor — Ayrshire History

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