Pencaitland and Ormiston @ Urbansea

Woodhall Colliery was the only pit owned by the Woodhall Coal Company. Sunk in 1903, it was designed to produce coal for 20 years but favourable geological conditions allowed it to continue until 1944. Working pit ponies from Woodhall Colliery grazing in the East Lothian countryside on one of their rare ‘holidays’ above ground. Pit […]

Winton Mine, opened as a ventilation mine in 1943 by the Ormiston Coal Company, was developed by the NCB in 1949 to mine coal. Along with Bellyford, Oxenford No.3 and Castle, it formed the NCB’s economic ‘Ormiston Scheme’ to work the Diamond Seam.. This is the mine’s small steel screening plant which had one ‘tippler’, […]

Coal mining had provided a new wealth to many people although not necessarily to those that had to extract the black gold.  Coal mining in and around Pencaitland had been carried out for a long time, even before the industrial revolution of the 1800’s. A man named “Samuel Johnstoun, of Elphingston between the years 1622-25, […]