When most people talk of mining in this country they mean coal mining. Jordanhill has a long history of mining, but the mines of North Jordanhill yielded not just coal, they produced iron ore which was sent by canal to ironworks for smelting and the bings provided fireclay for the manufacture of bricks in the local brickworks.

The other thing one thinks about in relation to mining is mine shafts or pits. There were at least 8 pit shafts or air shafts in North Jordanhill which is the area bounded by Anniesland Road, the railway line and Crow Road. There were at least another six pits just outside this area. And there were bings. Some interesting reminiscences of coal mining were given by William Campbell in his 1932 talk entitled “Jordanhill, Past and Present”, see http://www.wsmclean.com/campbell

In a paper given to the Geological Society of Glasgow in 1887, James S McLellan gave a detailed account of the Jordanhill coalfield and its associated geology. The top 35 feet of ground is generally made up of boulder clay then an18 feet layer of brick clay, followed by several layers of shale on top of the shallowest coal layer. McLellan’s paper is very technical but in this web page I have attempted to abstract a brief summary.

Coal Mining.

There are records of coal mining going back to 1690, thus serious commercial mining was actively carried out in the area for about two hundred years until the late 1800’s. The coal field extended for about a mile from north to south and about one and a half miles wide, covering an area of around 1,000 acres.

The coal seams varied in thickness between a few inches and several feet and coal was extracted using the “stoop and room” method. Stoops were virtually columns of untouched coal which were left to support the ground above while the rooms were the huge areas of extracted coal or other material. The stoops varied in size, some were as small as 4 feet square while others were as large as 12 feet by 36 feet. Miners were reluctant to leave these big chucks of coal but they had to consider their own safety while working underground.

Despite leaving stoops, the weight of the overlying ground eventually puts too much stress on the small columns of coal and local subsidence occurs so the Smiths wisely took steps to ensure there was no mining activity below their mansion house. However large areas of North Jordanhill has suffered for years from minor settlement and some examples of this are given later.

The coal seams were as shallow as 55 feet below ground level and as deep as 500 feet with pits up to 400 feet deep. The seams were not level but dipped towards the north and many were given names such as “The Wee Coal” and “Main Coal”.

The Smiths owned the mineral rights for all strata below their lands and they made a fortune for many years from the fees (known as lordship) payable to them based on the tonnage of coal and other material brought to the surface. For example, in 1874 they received either sixpence (2.5p)or one shilling (5p) per ton depending on the quality. Title deeds for the houses in North Jordanhill all contain clauses which reserve for the Smiths and their descendants the rights to all the coal, shale, limestone, ironstone, freestone, whinstone and “whole other metals and minerals” under the plot of land being feued.

By the end of the 1800’s all the seams were pretty well worked out and the Smith’s income dwindled accordingly. That is what led to their decision to feu off the land for housing.

Ironstone Mining

At a depth of about 200 feet was the first of several beds of ironstone, a material had been identified while digging for coal seams. It was known as blackband ironstone and was of a high quality such that just over two tons of raw material could be smelted to give a ton of pure iron. The seams were generally quite thin, between 9 and 18 inches, so large quantities of surrounding material had to be brought to the surface in order to actually dig it. This resulted in huge bings of material such as blaes and clays and these bings led to the local industry of brickmaking.

The lordship on ironstone was very worthwhile and from the estate records it can be seen, for example, that in 1876 the Smiths received up to 4 shillings (20p) a ton of ironstone on the output of over 24,000 tons. They also received an annual rental from the mine owners of £3,000 a year. These were enormous sums in these days so it is small wonder that the landowners remained rich and powerful.

As with the coal mining, the ironstone ran out and around 1892 all mining in this area ceased.

Brickworks

As stated above, mining inevitably results in additional unwanted material being brought up to the surface. Not only does it come from the excavations of pit shafts and the long tunnels needed to reach the seams of coal and ironstone, but also as thin unwanted layers between the saught-after seams.

On the 1859 Ordnance Survey map there is an unnamed brickworks on the south side of Anniesland Road just east of what is now Helensburgh Drive. There is also Skaterigg Brick and Tile Works shown to sit on open ground just north of Anniesland Road roughly where the tyre and exhaust company now stands on Great Western Road west of Anniesland Cross.

On the 1895 Ordnance Survey map the only brickwork remaining is the Woodend Brickwork which stood on the west side of Crow Road just north of Southbrae Drive. Photograph No.8 of the webpage Bygone Jordanhill at http://www.wsmclean.com/bygones shows the brickwork building.

Gilchrist and Goldie’s Woodend Brickwork

This map is based on the Ordnance Survey map of 1859. and the heavy chain dotted line is the boundary between Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire.

The main brickworks building stood on the west side of Crow Road just north of what is now Southbrae Drive but they also needed large areas of land round about. Part of their area extended to a large field on the other side of Crow Road. In 1869 there were no railway lines in the Jordanhill area but shortly afterwards North British Railway Company bought part of the brickworks site to build the 24 feet high embankment to carry the line between Hyndland and Anniesland Although this area had once belonged to the Jordanhill Estate it had been sold to the Oswalds of Scotstoun and there was also an abandoned coal pit within the brickworks boundary. The presence of that pit meant that there was also a ready supply of bing material for brickmaking.

The works produced around 2 million bricks per annum and many of them were used to build the houses on the east side of Crow Road. About 30 years ago I obtained one of their unused brick which is boldly marked “Gilchrist & Goldie Crow Road Partick Glasgow 1878”

The legacy of mining

As mentioned above, land above mine workings gradually settles due to the collapse of the stoops but due to the large masses of ground between the surface and the workings the actual settlement can be almost imperceptible. However local areas can suffer more seriously.

The terrace of houses on the north side of Southbrae Drive between Crow Road and King Edward Road have been particularly affected and many of the lintels above their doors and windows are no longer horizontal. The houses at the King Edward Road end of that terrace settled so badly many years ago that they had to be demolished. New houses have since been built in their place.

The Barclay Curle site which Barratt bought for their Burlington Gate housing development required major ground remedial works prior to construction. In 1982 their consultants examined the records of the Garibaldi ironstone workings below the site and produced a scheme which involved drilling down and packing the old workings with concrete.

Shortly before the playing fields on Anniesland Road were sold for the Laurel Park development, a “sink hole” suddenly appeared in the middle of one of the blaes pitches. A sink hole is a depression of the ground surface immediately above an abandoned pit shaft and I recall the example in this pitch was about fifteen feet diameter and around three feet deep. It was quickly fenced off. The pit was shown on old plans and known as No 2 Pit

When old pit shafts were abandoned, they were supposed to be completely filled in with solid rubble packed tightly. However unscrupulous contractors often just tipped in any old junk and muck including timber and topped off the job with the uppermost few feet well compacted. After many years, sometimes centuries, the timbers rot away, a sudden void develops far down the shaft and the infilling material above, together with parts of the ground around the old pit, all moves suddenly downwards. Modern remedial action when this occurs includes pumping the old shaft with concrete and forming a large reinforced concrete slab over the affected area.

In the case of the Laurel Park site the developers wisely decided to avoid building a house on the old sink hole and a small roundabout at the end of the road layout now marks the precise spot.

The 1895 and 1913 editions of the maps show an interesting tramway system supplying a bing at what is now the fire station on Anniesland Road. Running diagonally underneath Anniesland Road heading for what is now Knightswood Secondary School is a railway (labelled as a tramway). There is a deep cutting into the higher ground on which the school stands and if you look closely at the grassy slopes behind the fence right at the north east corner of the junction of Anniesland Road and Knightswood Road, you can make out the remnants of that cutting.

There are no records of any mining in South Jordanhill.

Back to home page http://www.wsmclean.com/ 18 April 2005