Greenrigg Pit

Overview

A small early pit on Benhar moor with a row of cottages beside it, abandoned more than a century and a half ago and still legible in the ground: a stone-filled hollow where the shaft was, the low grassed bing around it, and the footings and garden walls of the row. Most of its neighbours have been ploughed, planted or landscaped away.

History

The coal districts of West Lothian were once peppered with small pits that worked for a few years and were abandoned, and in the remoter parts it was necessary to build rows of cottages at the pithead to house the men. Greenrigg was one of these, on the lands of the Baillies of Polkemmet, at the centre 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. It lay on the West Lothian side of the county boundary; the first pits in the Benhar area were organised by Sir John Inglis of Cramond. The pit was sunk in 1806 by Lord Polkemmet, two miles east of Harthill, and it employed thirteen miners, two boys and some labourers on a seam about 25 metres below ground. It produced 8,000 tons of coal a year, sold into Edinburgh at six shillings and fourpence a ton and returning something like a thousand pounds a year. The men held their houses with the job and paid rent for them to the owner of the pit, so that injury or ill health cost a family its home as well as its wage. The shaft was abandoned by the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1856, along with most of the other Benhar pits, though it may still have been working in 1851, when the census recorded an engine keeper and a banksman among the residents of the row. Ten years after that the row was still occupied by mining families, its eight small rooms home to fourteen adults and twenty children. The row itself seems to have been abandoned some time in the 1870s. The pit and its row were typical of that early, small-scale industry and unusual only in having survived it. At most such sites later mining, forestry or land renewal has obliterated the evidence; at Greenrigg the pit had been abandoned for over 170 years when it was surveyed and was still plainly visible. The name was later reused: in 1905 United Collieries sank a new deep pit a little to the east of Greenrigg farm and called it Greenrigg, and the rows built for its men around the time of the First World War became the village of Greenrigg that stands today.

Geology

Shallow Coal Measures seams on Benhar moor, at the West Lothian edge of the Central Scottish coalfield — the same thin, near-surface coal that the scatter of small pits across the moor was sunk to reach.

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

Workings

A single shaft to a seam about 25 metres down, with a row of cottages beside it and pithead buildings and roads around it. The workforce at sinking was thirteen miners, two boys and some labourers, and an engine keeper and a banksman were living in the row in 1851, so there was winding machinery of some kind on the site.

Closure

Abandoned; the survey that recorded the site put the abandonment at over 170 years before, which places it in the first half of the 19th century. No closure date has been located.

What remains

The site lies close beside the road from Harthill to Fauldhouse, just south of the track to Greenrigg farm. A low grassed bing marks the pit, grazed by sheep. A pock-mark in the ground part filled with field stones marks the shaft itself, at the centre of an area of pit waste, and other humps and hollows suggest the pithead buildings and roads. Nearby, contours and scattered stones mark the line of the row, including its internal dividing walls, and the gardens that lay along its northern side.

The shaft hollow, the bing, the earthworks of the pithead buildings and the footings and garden walls of the miners' row — an unusually complete set of traces for an early Scottish pit of this size.

Recorded claims

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

• The pit at Greenrigg lay at the centre of a cluster of small pits on Benhar moor, on the lands of Sir William Baillie of Polkemmet, with a row of cottages built at the pithead to house the workforce. ¹
• Over 170 years after abandonment the shaft is evident as a stone-filled hollow at the centre of an area of pit waste, with a low grassed bing, earthworks of the pithead buildings, and the footings, dividing walls and gardens of the row. ¹
• The pit was sunk at Greenrigg in 1806 by Lord Polkemmet, two miles east of Harthill, employing thirteen miners, two boys and some labourers on a seam about 25 metres deep, and produced 8,000 tons a year sold into Edinburgh at six shillings and fourpence a ton for revenues of about £1,000 a year. ²
• The shaft was abandoned by the first Ordnance Survey map of 1856, though the 1851 census recorded an engine keeper and a banksman in the row; the row was still home to fourteen adults and twenty children in 1861 and seems to have been abandoned in the 1870s. ¹
• In 1905 United Collieries sank a new deep pit east of Greenrigg farm and gave it the Greenrigg name; the cottages built for its men became the present village. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) The First Greenrigg — Scottish Shale (Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry)
2. (secondary) Harthill, Scotland — Wikipedia

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