Benhar Colliery

Overview

The colliery that gave the Benhar district its name, worked on the moor between Fauldhouse and Harthill. A parliamentary inquiry of the 1840s heard its lessee, George Simpson, say he raised seventy thousand tons a year and shipped it out on a railway he had built himself, down a gradient so steep the wagons were run eight at a time with iron snibbles jammed in their wheels. It is not the same mine as the later East Benhar.

History

William Forrest's map of Linlithgowshire of 1818 records a coal pit at Benhar on the property of the trustees of the late Philip Russell of Fauldhouse: a pit worked by a steam engine of seven horsepower, eight fathoms deep on a seam fifteen inches thick, leased and worked by Mr Simpson of Monkland. By the 1840s George Simpson was giving evidence to the committee on the Linlithgowshire Roads Bill as lessee of Benhar Colliery in the parish of Whitburn, from which he raised seventy thousand tons a year; the coal went by private railroad to the public railway and never touched the roads, which was his point. He kept two horses. The Benhar Colliery branch he built was afterwards bought by the North British Railway, and shortened, as a newspaper account of an accident on it puts it, no doubt to save expenditure. The line ran along the ridge of hilly ground with a gradient of about one in fifteen at one point, worked by tank locomotives, and the load was limited to eight full wagons at a time with iron snibbles put into the wheels of several of them to hold them back. One Saturday fifteen loaded wagons were brought to the top of the incline; the guard put in a single snibble and, supposing that would hold them, went off with the engine to take water. The weight gradually overcame the one snibbled wagon, the train gathered momentum and went down the incline at a fearful rate, and thirteen wagons were smashed and piled one over the other at the bottom. Men and engine power were brought from Morningside the next day to clear the wreck; six or seven wagons were beyond repair and the damage exceeded £400. Benhar was one of a cluster of small pits on Benhar moor whose heyday was the first half of the 19th century, supplying a good grade of house coal to the smart homes of Edinburgh. Some twenty mines worked around Fauldhouse in all, the last of them closing in 1974.

Geology

Coal Measures seams on the moor between Fauldhouse and Harthill, at the West Lothian edge of the Central Scottish coalfield. The 1818 record of a pit eight fathoms deep on a fifteen-inch seam gives the scale of the early working: shallow coal in thin seams, won close to the surface across a scatter of small pits rather than from one deep shaft.

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

Workings

The 1818 account describes a shaft eight fathoms deep wound by a seven-horsepower steam engine. The colliery's distinguishing feature was its transport: a private mineral railway built by Simpson to reach the public line, running along a ridge with a gradient of about one in fifteen, worked by tank locomotives with loads capped at eight wagons and wheels snibbled to hold them on the descent.

Closure

No closure date has been located. The pits of the Benhar cluster had their heyday in the first half of the 19th century, and coal working in the district ended with East Benhar in 1957 and with the last Fauldhouse pit in 1974.

What remains

Nothing of this colliery's present state was established from the sources read for this pass.

Related mines

• East Benhar Colliery — East Benhar takes its name from this colliery and worked the same Benhar ground, but is a separate and much later mine, driven in the late 1930s and closed in 1957.

Recorded claims

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

• Forrest's map of Linlithgowshire of 1818 records a coal pit at Benhar worked by a seven-horsepower steam engine, eight fathoms deep on a fifteen-inch seam, leased by Mr Simpson of Monkland on the property of the trustees of the late Philip Russell of Fauldhouse. ¹
• George Simpson told the committee on the Linlithgowshire Roads Bill that he was lessee of Benhar Colliery in the parish of Whitburn and raised 70,000 tons a year, sent out by private railroad to the public railway. ¹
• The Benhar Colliery branch, built by Simpson and later bought by the North British Railway, had a gradient of about one in fifteen; fifteen loaded wagons ran away down it on a Saturday and thirteen were destroyed, with damage exceeding £400. ¹
• Benhar lay at the centre of a cluster of small pits on Benhar moor whose heyday was the first half of the 19th century, supplying house coal to Edinburgh. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Benhar Colliery — Scottish Shale (Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry)
2. (secondary) The First Greenrigg — Scottish Shale (Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry)

Record created: 12 September 2026 · Last researched: 12 September 2026