Durie Colliery

Overview

The Durie estate's colliery at Sillerhole on the north edge of Leven, worked by D. Landale junior and Company from the 1850s and by the Fife Coal Company from the 1890s, with a new shaft sinking in the mid-1890s. It employed over three hundred in 1894 and about two hundred at the turn of the century, and its workers' houses at Sillerhole gave the district its name; the den where its pits stood is now Letham Glen park.

History

The Durham Mining Museum dates the colliery to 1855 under D. Landall junior and Company, working household, manufacturing and steam coal on the Durie estate north of Leven; the Fife place-name survey records that Sillerhole, now part of the town, consisted formerly of the houses of the Durie colliery's workers, and that the Sillerhole Den through which the Scoonie Burn flows had three coal pits and two ochre pits, ochre having been worked commercially from about 1830. By 1894 the pit was the Fife Coal Company's, with 321 employed under Dugald Baird; in 1896 it was returned as sinking, with 197 employed under H. Nisbet, and the museum's death list has a sinker, Patrick Brown, killed by a fall from a kettle in 1890 and a pithead worker killed in 1898 when a steam hoist dropped. The 1900 list gives 205 under Richard Kirkby. The museum closes the record at 1900, but its list of deaths runs on: a repairer buried by a roof fall on a longwall road in December 1902, and a pit joiner killed in February 1903 while removing pipes from an abandoned shaft, which shows one shaft given up while another still worked. The colliery was served by the East of Fife Railway. Sillerhole Den became Letham Glen public park in 1925 on land given by John Letham.

Geology

Fife coalfield, Coal Measures of the Leven and Wemyss district; seams are not recorded. Ochre was also dug in Sillerhole Den from about 1830.

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

Workings

Shaft colliery with more than one shaft: a sinking was in progress in 1896 and an abandoned shaft was being stripped of its pipes in 1903. Employment from the Lists of Mines: 321 in 1894, 197 in 1896, 205 in 1900. Longwall roads are named in a 1902 accident entry. Depths are not recorded.

Closure

The museum closes its record at 1900 but records deaths at the colliery in 1902 and 1903; the closing date is not recorded.

What remains

Sillerhole Den is Letham Glen public park, opened in 1925; the Sillerhole housing is part of Leven. No colliery structures are reported.

Related mines

• Leven Colliery — Both were Fife Coal Company pits at Leven under one manager, Dugald Baird, in the 1890s, and the company's 1878 leases opened pits on the Durie estate alongside the Leven sinkings.
• Pirnie Colliery — Both pits were worked by the Fife Coal Company.
• Wellesley Colliery — Neighbouring Leven-Methil pits; Wellesley was the Wemyss Coal Company's big sinking on the coast.

What's uncertain

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

• Opened in 1855; the museum closes it at 1900 but lists deaths there in 1902 and 1903. (uncertain) ¹

Recorded claims

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

• Opened in 1855; the museum closes it at 1900 but lists deaths there in 1902 and 1903. (uncertain) ¹
• D. Landall junior and Company, then the Fife Coal Company, which returned it in 1894, 1896 (sinking) and 1900. ^2,1
• 321 employed in 1894, 197 in 1896 and 205 in 1900. ^2,1
• Sillerhole was the settlement of the Durie colliery's workers' houses; its den held three coal pits and two ochre pits and is now Letham Glen park. ³
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Durie' (catalogue 4375, Six & Eight Feet, dated 1903). ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Durie Colliery — Durham Mining Museum — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) Durham Mining Museum: Fife Coal Co., Ltd. — Durham Mining Museum
3. (secondary) Sillerhole — Fife Place-name Data — University of Glasgow, Fife Place-name Data
4. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: DURIE — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority
5. (secondary) Durie Colliery — RAILSCOT — RAILSCOT

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