Pirnie Colliery

Overview

A cannel and gas-coal colliery at Methilhill, just east of Cameron Bridge in east Fife, leased in the early 1850s as the Methilhill Pit and raising cannel coal by 1856. Under Edward Binnie's Pirnie Coal Company its Parrot and Thirty-Inch seams fed the Methil Paraffin Oil Company's retorts, and after the Fife Coal Company bought it in 1877, in the purchase that turned that company's fortunes, it worked on as Leven No. 3 and then Pirnie No. 3 with up to two hundred men, its Parrot seam abandoned in 1905 and the pit gone by the 1920s. The 1880 official return garbles it as 'Firmey'.

History

The lease of the Methilhill Pit, the original name of what became the Wemyss Collieries' Pirnie Pit, was granted in the early 1850s and cannel coal was being raised by 1856; an earlier shaft to the south-west, the Ashgrove Pit, appears on an 1855 abandonment plan with the Cameron and Kirkland pits. About 1861 the lease passed to Edward Binnie of Manchester, whose Pirnie Coal Company worked the Parrot and Thirty-Inch seams from a pit 60 fathoms deep; R. Carrick was manager in 1868. Between 1864 and 1876 the Methil Paraffin Oil Company refined crude oil from Pirnie's cannel in forty retorts at Methil harbour. In 1873 the No. 2 pit, under J. W. Kirkby, had shafts of 360 and 162 feet and in 1874 employed 88 underground and 24 on the surface. Binnie's lease expired in November 1877 and the Fife Coal Company, which had leased the Methil field in 1876 on a British Linen Bank loan and bought the Leven fields, took Pirnie with them; the new fields returned the company to profit by 1878 and lifted its output towards 300,000 tons by 1884. The pit was returned as Leven No. 3 in 1877-79 and as Pirnie No. 3 from 1880, working the Wemyss Parrot from shafts of 372 and 180 feet, and the 1880 official list's entry 'Firmey, Methhillhill, Fife Coal Co. Limited' beside the company's Leven pit is evidently this colliery under a garbled name. A Schiele fan had been installed by 1890, when Dugald Baird managed 139 employees; the company's returns give 224 in 1894, 204 in 1896 and 106 in 1900, falling to 24 in 1905, the year the Parrot seam was abandoned, with 108 in 1911 and 227 in 1918 shared with Leven No. 4. A Pirnie and Victoria plan for the Wood and Four Foot seams is dated 1914 and the Diamond and Bowhouse seams were abandoned the same year; Fife Pits gives the closure as not known but before the 1920s. A Pirnie No. 2 pit was sunk some distance to the east, its dates unknown.

Geology

Pirnie worked the gas coals of the Methil and Leven district of the East Fife coalfield: the Parrot or Gas coal, valued for gas-making and oil distillation before electric light, the Thirty-Inch, Wood, Diamond, Bowhouse and Dysart Lower seams, sedimentary beds of the Limestone Coal Group and Coal Measures dipping under the Firth of Forth.

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

Workings

Pirnie No. 1 lay just east of Cameron Bridge, close to Methilhill, with the older Ashgrove shaft to its south-west and a No. 2 pit to the east. Paired shafts of 360 and 162 feet in the 1870s and 372 and 180 feet under the Fife Coal Company, furnace-ventilated until a Schiele fan was fitted by 1890.

Closure

Fife Pits gives the closure as not known but before the 1920s; the Parrot seam was abandoned in 1905 and the Diamond and Bowhouse in 1914, and from 1918 the manpower was returned jointly with Leven No. 4.

What remains

No account of what remains has been located; Fife Pits notes that the locations of the several Pirnie pits are still being verified.

Nearby mines

• Wellesley Colliery — 2.1 km E
• Michael Colliery — 4.1 km SW
• Rothes Colliery — 5.2 km W
• Randolph Colliery — 6.5 km SW
• Frances Colliery — 8.3 km SW

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

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

• The Methilhill Pit's lease was granted in the early 1850s and it was extracting cannel coal by 1856; about 1861 the lease passed to Edward Binnie, whose Pirnie Coal Company worked the Parrot and Thirty-Inch seams of the 60-fathom pit. ¹
• An 1855 abandonment plan covers the Ashgrove, Cameron, Pirnie and Kirkland pits for the Dysart Main, Parrot and Chemiss seams. ^1,2
• Between 1864 and 1876 the Methil Paraffin Oil Company refined crude oil from the cannel mined at Pirnie in forty retorts at Methil harbour. ³
• In 1873-76 the No. 2 pit under J. W. Kirkby had shafts of 360 and 162 feet and employed 88 underground and 24 on the surface in 1874. ¹
• The Fife Coal Company acquired Pirnie when Binnie's lease expired in November 1877, having leased the Methil field in 1876 and bought the Leven fields; the new fields returned the company to profit by 1878. ^1,4
• The 1880 official list gives 'Firmey, Methhillhill, Fife Coal Co. Limited' beside the company's Leven pit; this record takes the entry to be Pirnie under a garbled name. (uncertain) ^5,1
• The Fife Coal Company returned 224 employed at Pirnie in 1894, 204 in 1896, 106 in 1900 and 24 in 1905. ⁶
• A Schiele fan had been installed by 1890, when Dugald Baird managed 117 underground and 22 on the surface. ¹
• The Parrot seam of Pirnie Nos. 1 and 2 and Leven No. 4 was abandoned in April and June 1905. ^1,7
• Fife Pits gives the closure as not known but before the 1920s; the Diamond and Bowhouse seams were abandoned in June 1914 and 1918 manpower was shared with Leven No. 4. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Pit-P-1. Pirnie Colliery, Methilhill — Fife Pits and Memorial Book (Michael Martin)
2. (primary) Ashgrove, Cameron, Pirnie and Kirkland abandonment plan: Dysart Main, Parrot and Chemiss seams, 1855 (mine plans catalogue) — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority
3. (secondary) Methil — Early History and the Docks — Methil History
4. (secondary) Fife Coal Company — Wikipedia
5. (secondary) List of coal mines UK 1880 — Coalmining History Resource Centre
6. (secondary) Durham Mining Museum: Fife Coal Co., Ltd. — Durham Mining Museum
7. (primary) Pirnie abandonment plan: Parrot seam, 1905 (mine plans catalogue) — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026