Hillhouserigg Colliery

Overview

A Shotts colliery, also called Greystonelee, worked from 1850 until April 1949. The Shotts Iron Company owned it in its early years and again at the end, when it employed 244 men.

History

Hillhouserigg Colliery, also recorded as Greystonelee, lay at Shotts in Lanarkshire and is dated from 1850. It belonged to the Shotts Iron Company in its early years: the company listed Hillhouserigg among its works in 1855, and in 1870 as Cairneyhead and Hillhouse-rigg. The national record classes it as a nineteenth-century colliery and ironstone mine. Later it was worked by the Hillhouserigg Coal Co. Ltd, with 93 people in 1894 and 133 in 1910, raising gas, household, manufacturing and steam coal from the Laigh and Smithy seams, with the Hill seam by 1910. That year a pit sinker was killed in a shaft that had just been sunk 48 fathoms from the Gas coal down to the Mill coal, and by 1911 some of the coal was being cut by machine.

The Shotts Iron Company had the colliery again by 1944. In 1930 a miner of 27, Joseph Storrie, died after being crushed between a full hutch and a rake of loaded hutches underground. At nationalisation in 1947 Hillhouserigg employed 244 people, 211 of them below ground. It closed in April 1949, the date of the abandonment plans of its Upper, Mid and Lower Drumgray, Main and Shotts Gas workings, and by 1954 it was kept only for pumping. Plans of 1939 survive showing Hillhouserigg and the neighbouring Baton colliery with their bings.

Geology

Lanarkshire coalfield at Shotts: the Upper Drumgray (Shotts Ball), Mid Drumgray (Laigh) and Lower Drumgray (Smithy) coals, the Hill, Main, Mill, Virtuewell and Shotts Gas seams, and nineteenth-century ironstone.

Workings

Shafts to the Drumgray, Main and Shotts Gas seams, one sunk a further 48 fathoms from the Gas coal to the Mill coal in 1910; machine-cut faces by 1911; pumping only by 1954.

Closure

Closed in April 1949, when its last plans were lodged; it was kept for pumping only by 1954.

What remains

Unknown.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Related mines

• Calderhead Colliery — Neighbouring Shotts Iron Company pits at Shotts, about a kilometre apart.

Recorded claims

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

• Hillhouserigg Colliery, Shotts, is dated 1850 to April 1949. ^1,2
• The Shotts Iron Company listed Hillhouserigg among its works in 1855 and 1870, and owned it again in 1944 and 1947. ^3,4
• Greystonelee, also known as Hillhouserigg Colliery, was a nineteenth-century colliery and ironstone mine in the parish of Shotts. ⁵
• Hillhouserigg employed 93 people in 1894, 133 in 1910 and 244 in 1947, when 211 worked below ground. ^2,4
• In 1930 Joseph Storrie, 27, died after being crushed between hutches in Hillhouserigg Colliery. ⁶
• Hillhouserigg's Upper, Mid and Lower Drumgray, Main and Shotts Gas workings were abandoned in 1949. ⁷

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) NCB Collieries - Scotland (Northern Mine Research Society) — Northern Mine Research Society
2. (primary) Hillhouserigg Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) 1944 List of Mines (Scottish Mining Website transcription) — Scottish Mining Website
4. (primary) Shotts Iron Co., Ltd. — Durham Mining Museum
5. (secondary) Greystonelee Colliery (NRHE 82466) — Historic Environment Scotland (trove.scot, formerly Canmore)
6. (primary) Shotts parish accidents post 1900 — Scottish Mining Website — Scottish Mining Website
7. (primary) BGS mine plan: Hillhouserigg, Upper Drumgray, abandoned 1949 — BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans

Record created: 4 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026