Balbardie Colliery

Overview

Bathgate's long-lived colliery on the Balbardie lands, begun by James Hosie in the 1850s and worked by Robert Stewart, Henry Walker and Cameron, the Balbardie Colliery Co. and from 1906 William Baird and Co. It raised gas and cannel coal and blackband ironstone from the Balbardie seam; a boiler explosion in 1895 and a headframe collapse in 1896 each killed two.

History

Bathgate had been mined for a century when James Hosie of Falkirk opened the Balbardie mine in the 1850s, carting his coal to depots for want of a railway. The Dovecot pit, 28 fathoms deep with engines of 12 and 18 horsepower, appears on the map of about 1855. Hosie was killed in the Winchburgh tunnel railway disaster in the 1860s, and Robert Stewart of Murdiston, Lord Provost of Glasgow, extended the works and laid a railway. About 1869 Henry Walker of Airdrie bought them; as Henry Walker and Cameron the firm worked them until Walker's death in 1891.

The Balbardie Colliery Co. Ltd was floated in 1895 with £50,000 to take over Balbardie and the adjoining Ballencrieff field. In the three years to 1894 the colliery averaged 30,000 tons of common coal, 11,000 tons of ironstone and 6,700 tons of cannel a year, from the Balbardie seam. In February 1895 two boilers burst at the Dovecot pit, killing two men (see Disasters, below); in July 1896 the frame of a new pithead collapsed under two joiners, killing both.

A new No. 2 pit was sunk in 1900 and the old No. 1 was given up. In 1906 the works were offered to William Baird and Co., under whom No. 2 Balbardie pit was worked as part of their Hopetoun colliery into the 1930s. The Balbardie gas coal was abandoned in 1946. The No. 1 pit site is now a public park.

Geology

The Balbardie seam of gas coal, cannel and calcined blackband ironstone, about 5 1/2 feet of coal in 1884, with the Main and lower seams below; the Ballencrieff field to the west. Plans also name the Big Parrot.

Workings

No. 1 (the Dovecot pit), with a downcast of 12 by 5 1/2 feet and an upcast 168 feet deep, worked longwall and ventilated by furnace; a dook at one in three; six boilers at the pithead; and No. 2 pit, sunk in 1900.

Closure

No. 1 pit was superseded by No. 2 after 1900 and had closed by 1913; the Balbardie gas coal workings were abandoned in 1946.

What remains

The site of No. 1 pit is landscaped as a public park; no surface features remain.

None at No. 1 pit.

Redevelopment

No. 1 pit site landscaped as a public park.

Disasters & major incidents

• Balbardie Colliery boiler explosion, 1895
  19 February 1895 · Machinery · 2 fatalities
  On the morning of Tuesday 19 February 1895 the two centre boilers of six at the Dovecot pit of Walker and Cameron's Balbardie Colliery, Bathgate, burst, wrecking the pithead works, felling a chimney stalk and killing the fireman Richard Beswick and a labourer, Robert Strickland. About 300 men were thrown idle.

Recorded claims

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

• James Hosie of Falkirk started the Balbardie mine about fifty years before 1906. ^1,2
• Henry Walker of Airdrie bought the Balbardie works about 1869. ²
• The Balbardie Colliery Co. Ltd was floated in 1895 with a capital of £50,000. ²
• In the three years to March 1894 the colliery averaged 30,000 tons of common coal, 11,000 tons of ironstone and 6,700 tons of cannel coal a year. ²
• In July 1896 two joiners were killed when a pithead frame being erected collapsed. ³
• No. 2 Balbardie pit was sunk in 1900 and later worked by William Baird and Co. ^1,4
• The Balbardie gas coal workings were abandoned in 1946. ⁵

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Scottish Shale: Balbardie No.1 pit — Scottish Shale (Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry)
2. (secondary) Scottish Shale archive: Balbardie Colliery Co. Ltd - A Retrospective (Linlithgowshire Gazette, 8 May 1906) — Scottish Shale (Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry)
3. (secondary) Scottish Mining Website: Lothians accidents 1871-1900 — Scottish Mining Website
4. (primary) NMRS Coal Mining Accidents and Deaths: Hopetoun, No.2 Balbardie Pit, 1918 — Northern Mine Research Society
5. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plan: Balbardie, Balbardie Gas, abandoned 1946 — British Geological Survey
6. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plan: Balbardie, Big Parrot and ironstone, abandoned 1865 — British Geological Survey
7. (primary) NMRS Coal Mining Accidents and Deaths: Balbardie Pit, 1905 — Northern Mine Research Society

Record created: 13 October 2026 · Last researched: 13 October 2026