Hillend coal pit

Vertical shaft

Serving Uphall Oil Works or Hopetoun Oil Works

A pit, or a number of pits, working the Houston Coal and established prior to the shale oil period. Notes associated with "shale seams" sketch (see Drawings) suggest that the pit was worked for a period by the Uphall Mineral Oil Company, later the Uphall Mineral Oil Company Ltd, presumably to fuel their Uphall Oil Works (opened c.1866) or their Hopetoun Oil Works (opened c.1872).

The first edition OS map (c.1856) shows a building - presumably an engine-house - adjacent to a shaft and a refuse heap. An "old shaft" close to a weighing machine is shown on the approach road to the site from the public Faucheldean to Ochiltree road. The second edition OS map (c.1897) shows no trace of the pit building shown on the earlier survey, although the outline of the refuse tip had been incorporated in the field boundary, and this area had become established as woodland by the time of the 1916 survey.

The second edition (c.1897) was the earliest to show a second area of disturbed ground, presumably a mine waste tip, (at 55.954950, -3.491521) , about 150m. east of the shaft shown on the 1856 plan. This suggests a new shaft may have been sunk close to this location, most likely that operated for a period by the Uphall Oil Company Ltd. BGS plan LSP 67R (see Drawings, below) marks a "pit" at this location.

Shale-field: Ecclesmachan district.

Mapped by the Ordnance Survey of c.1855 appears to show the pit in operation.

Drawings

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