Wallyford Colliery

Overview

Wallyford, a collier village a mile and a half east of Musselburgh, worked the Great Seam, the Jewel and the Five and Four Feet under the Edinburgh Collieries Company. It grew sevenfold in ten years to nearly eight hundred people by 1910, then shrank as fast, and by 1933 was down to thirty-six. It kept a brickworks going long after the coal stopped.

History

Groome's gazetteer of the 1880s has Wallyford as simply a collier village in Inveresk parish, a mile and a half east by south of Musselburgh. The Durham Mining Museum gives the colliery as opened in 1855 and closed in 1930, under Deans and Moore and then the Edinburgh Collieries Co. Ltd, with the National Coal Board from 1947.

Its growth was sudden. The Mines Inspectors' returns give 94 people in 1894 and 120 in 1896, then 378 in 1900, 655 in 1905 and 782 in 1910 — a sevenfold rise in sixteen years. The fall was almost as quick: 592 in 1915, 599 in 1920, 382 in 1923 and 36 by 1933, where it stayed in 1940. The 1954 return records 32 people on pumping only. Household, manufacturing and steam coal came out of it throughout, with fireclay returned in 1915, from the Great Seam, the Jewel and the Five and Four Feet.

The brickworks outlasted the coal. Charles and Andrew Christie were working the Wallyford Tile and Brick Works near Musselburgh by 1867, and the works passed with the colliery to the Edinburgh Collieries Company, which held collieries at Bankton, Bellyford, Carberry, Fleets, Prestongrange and Wallyford, the last two with brickworks attached. The village itself outlasted both, growing after the pit as an overspill and commuter settlement for Musselburgh and Edinburgh.

Geology

Wallyford worked the Midlothian coalfield on the East Lothian side, through seams the returns name as the Great Seam, the Jewel, the Five Feet and the Four Feet, with fireclay raised alongside the coal and used at the brickworks on the same site.

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

Workings

Shaft depths and the number of pits are not recorded. A mineral railway ran from the colliery, and its trackbed is now a footpath through Wallyford.

Closure

The Durham Mining Museum gives the closure as 1930, but the colliery continued to return 36 people through the 1930s and 1940s and 32 on pumping in 1954, so the date marks the end of coal drawing rather than the end of the site.

What remains

The colliery site is a wooded area on the edge of the village, seen from Falside Hill above. The brickworks ground next to it is a wooded bing, and the mineral line that served the pit is a path.

Nothing built survives. The bing beside the former brickworks is now woodland.

Related mines

• Bankton Colliery — Both held by the Edinburgh Collieries Company.
• Bellyford Mine — Edinburgh Collieries Company pits in East Lothian.
• Carberry Colliery — Both held by the Edinburgh Collieries Company.
• Prestongrange Colliery — Both Edinburgh Collieries Company pits, and both had brickworks on the colliery site.

Disasters & major incidents

• Wallyford Colliery shaft accident, 1901
  21 January 1901 · Winding / Shaft Accident · 2 fatalities
  Two sinkers enlarging a shaft at Wallyford fell to the scaffold below on 21 January 1901 when the stone above a crosscut gave way; the previous shift had left fearing exactly that.
• Wallyford Colliery inrush, 1908
  27 May 1908 · Flooding / Inundation · 2 fatalities

  An irruption of water killed two miners, John Dickson and George Scott, at the Edinburgh Collieries Company's Wallyford Colliery, near Musselburgh, on 27 May 1908.

  On 27 May 1908 water broke into the workings of Wallyford Colliery, near Musselburgh, worked by the Edinburgh Collieries Company, and two miners, John Dickson, 39, and George Scott, 26, were killed.

Recorded claims

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

• The colliery rose from 94 people in 1894 to 782 in 1910, then fell to 382 by 1923 and 36 by 1933, a level it held in 1940; the 1954 return records 32 on pumping only. ¹
• Charles and Andrew Christie were working the Wallyford Tile and Brick Works near Musselburgh by 1867. The works passed with the colliery to the Edinburgh Collieries Company, which held Bankton, Bellyford, Carberry, Fleets, Prestongrange and Wallyford, the last two with brickworks. ²
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wallyford' (catalogue 9634, Jewel, dated 1931). ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Wallyford Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Wallyford Brickworks, Musselburgh, East Lothian — Scotland's Brick and Tile Manufacturing Industry
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: WALLYFORD — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority
4. (observational) Wallyford Colliery site (Geograph 19721) — Geograph Britain and Ireland, Richard Webb
5. (secondary) Wallyford: historical perspective — The Gazetteer for Scotland, after Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026