Ballochmyle Colliery

Overview

A coal colliery at Auchinleck in the Ayrshire coalfield, at work in 1880 under William Walker and still working in 1893 under William Taylor with John Whiteside as manager. It is easily lost: the Ballochmyle name today belongs overwhelmingly to the whinstone quarry, the viaduct and the Burns poem a few miles away at Mauchline, and this small pit has left almost nothing else behind.

History

Ballochmyle appears twice in the official lists of mines at work, thirteen years apart. The 1880 list of collieries at work in the United Kingdom enters it as 'Ballochmyle, Achinleck' under William Walker. The 1893 List of Mines in Scotland enters it again, as 'Ballochmyle — William Taylor, Ballochmyle Colliery, Auchinleck, R.S.O., coal', with John Whiteside as certificated manager. Between those two lines the pit changed hands; nothing else on record describes its working life at all. It was a small concern in a crowded coalfield. The parish of Auchinleck carried more than a dozen collieries at one time or another, and the pits that came to dominate it were the deep ones sunk by the larger companies — Highhouse and, later, the Barony, whose surviving A-frame headgear is now the memorial to Ayrshire mining. Ballochmyle is not among the names that survived.

Geology

The Ayrshire coalfield works the Carboniferous Coal Measures of the western Midland Valley of Scotland, a sequence of sandstones, mudstones and coal seams repeatedly cut by faults and, in this district, by igneous intrusions. Nothing on record names the seam Ballochmyle worked.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Unknown. Neither list gives employment, output or the nature of the workings, and nothing else on record describes them.

Closure

The closure date is not known. The colliery was at work in 1893 and does not appear thereafter.

What remains

Unknown. No dated site report or photograph identifiable as this colliery is recorded.

Unknown. Nothing on record describes what survives at the site.

Disasters & major incidents

• Ballochmyle Colliery shaft accident, 1897
  19 October 1897 · Winding / Shaft Accident · 2 fatalities
  An overman and a miner fell to their deaths at Ballochmyle, Auchinleck, on 19 October 1897 when the timbering of an air drift at the shaft top gave way and debris broke through the cage cover.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Ballochmyle' (catalogue 3885, Ell And Main, dated 1898); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ³

Recorded claims

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

• The official list of collieries at work in the United Kingdom in 1880 records 'Ballochmyle, Achinleck' under William Walker. ¹
• The 1893 List of Mines in Scotland records Ballochmyle — William Taylor, Ballochmyle Colliery, Auchinleck, R.S.O. — working coal, with John Whiteside as certificated manager. ²
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Ballochmyle' (catalogue 3885, Ell And Main, dated 1898); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ³

Sources

1. (secondary) List of coal mines UK 1880 — Coalmining History Resource Centre
2. (primary) List of Mines in Scotland, 1893 — Scottish Mining Website
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: BALLOCHMYLE — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 31 August 2026 · Last researched: 6 September 2026