The Road to Drumleman: Memories of Argyll Colliery

Artist Jan Nimmo has now completed The Road to Drumleman: Memories of the Argyll Colliery. This is a 50 minute documentary film, telling the story of Kintyre’s last coal mine, the Argyll Colliery (1947–1967).

She says: ‘Almost no physical traces of the mine remain and now it’s hard to imagine that the well run mine thrived just behind spectacular Machrihanish Bay.

‘When my father and former Argyll Colliery shot firer, Neil Nimmo, died 3 years ago, I realised that there was an urgency to gather the stories of the remaining colliery workers and so, though their personal narrative, the film gives an insight into working life; its hardships and camaraderie.

‘The stories span the life of the mine and pay tribute to all of the men who worked invisibly beneath the wild and unspoilt shores of western Kintyre’.

In a wonderful piece of serendipity, the premiere of the film is at Campbeltown’s Picture House at 26 Hall Street on Friday 30th July 2010/ Doors open at 7.30pm and the screening will begin at 8pm. Admission is £3.00 to cover the hire of the venue. There is only downstairs seating available.

The Picture House in Campbeltown, Argyll, is community owned and run and is the oldest continuously run, purpose-built cinema in Scotland still showing films.

The Argyll Colliery

The Argyll Colliery – sometimes known as the Machrihanish Coalfield – produced steam coal from two surface mines. The sinking of the mines began in 1946-47 and production started in 1950.

The main mine found coal at 365 metres down and at a gradient of 1 in 4. The upcast mine struck at 177 metres on a gradient of 1 in 2.5.

In its early days it produced 60 tons a day and 15.000 tons a year with 125 employees. At its peak, it was doing 500 tons a day with 245 employees.

It supplied power stations in Northern Ireland and its own power came from the North of Scotland Hydro Electricity Board.

Twice it suffered outbreaks of underground fire, with the first,  on 18th September 1958, causing a two-month long stoppage; the second occurring in 1960.

The mine closed in 1967.

These were not the days of health and safety regulations, nor were they times concerned to ease the severity of the conitions in which men worked.

At the start, there were no medical services on site. There were no baths until 1953, when pithead baths opened. There was a small canteen for packed-lunches.

Campbeltown, coal, whisky and transport

Coal was mined in Kintyre from the late 15th century. It wasn’t great quality coal but it was relatively easy to extract.

By the mid-18th century the output of the Kintyre mines was largely used to supply the whisky distilleries around Campbeltown.

Transporting the coal from the outlying mines into Campbeltown was expensive so in 1773 James Watt surveyed a canal designed to connect the coal mines to Campbeltown. The outcome was the 3-mile long Campbeltown and Machrihanish Canal, opened in 1794. The canal eventually fell into disuse and was pretty well abandoned by 1856.

In 1875 the Argyll Coal and Canal Company bought  the main colliery and, with the canal in derelict state, decided to explore the possibility of building a rail link to Campbeltown.

A light 4.5 mile long colliery railway, the narrow-gauge (2.3ft) Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway,  was built in 1876, linking the Kilkivan Pit to Campbeltown. Part of this track ran on the earthworks of the old canal. It carried only coal, hauling the coal tubs from the mine with its two locomotives, Princess and Chevalier.

At this stage most of the colliery’s ouput was for local use so the traffic on the light railway was seasonal. The owners began to look for additional uses the railway might serve in the warmer periods of the year, to generate more income.

By now, steam ships were bringing visitors into Campbeltown to see the remote and beautiful Kintyre peninsula. From this commercial opportunity was born the Association of Argyll Railway Co. Ltd, which applied for an order under the Light Railways Act to build a railway from Campbeltown out to Machrihanish, on the west coast.

Construction on this project began in 1905, working largely on the base of the old colliery track – but extending it to a new terminus at Machrihanish and taking the heat out of some of the earlier line’s testing gradients and curves.

The line opened on 18th August 1906 and was an instant success. It carried no fewer than 10,000 passengers in its first three weeks.  As they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every development signals the end of its predecessors and the horse-drawn tourist charabancs in Campbeltown became progressively redundant.

The rebuilding of the line also saw the replacement of the old flat trucks that carried the mine’s coal tubs. The line moved first to using standard 3.25 ton four-wheel open-sided coal wagons, bought from Hurst Nelson Ltd. of Motherwell. Later the line upgraded to using 4.5 ton wagons.

Interestingly, in the light of today’s ‘organisation’ of national rail services, the rail line did not own its own rolling stock. The wagons were the property of the Campbeltown Coal Company.

Each of the four passenger carriages, from Pickering of Wishaw – with two more were bought from Pickerings the following year in 1907 – had a central saloon with wooden tram-style seats for 64 passengers and open-end viewing platforms. One of the additional two carriages bought had a central luggage compartment.

The railway company did itself, however, own some additional stock. As well as maintenance stock – a 7-ton brakevan and a small platelayers’ trolley, it had an open-sided milk wagon carrying milk churns and a detachable snow plough.

Up to World War 1 the railway continued its seasonal pattern of carrying coal and passengers. After the war, however, it began to share the experience of the horse-drawn charabancs, finding itself displaced by the coming of the motor bus which offered flexibility of destination.

By 1931 the railway’s tourist trade was badly down and it stopped offering passenger services in the early summer of 1932. By 1934 the last trains had run.

The premieres on 30th July at Campbeltown Picture House

Jan Nimmo’s film will be interesting in its own right but the heart of it is, as she says,  the folk history carried in the memories of those who worked at Argyll’s last colliery.

This work immortalises men whose identities and working lives would otherwise have remained invisible, their voices unheard and their stories unknown.