The Cultural Coordinators recently went on a road trip to Newtongrange to visit to the National Mining Museum. The trip was a resounding success, and the Cultural Coordinators came away thoroughly inspired.

 

Firstly was a meet and greet with the Education Support Officer Alison Sheppard, who gave us a basic understanding of the Museum and the Lady Victoria pit and how it ended up being the National Mining Museum. Alison was extremely helpful and took us to the education room and showed us some of the many education resources on mining that she has developed over the course of time. This really gave the team food for thought, and we were very inspired and came away with lots of ideas of how the Pits and Ponies resources could look!!

  

Lunch in the cafe was extremely yummy, and if you’re ever going they do a mean macaroni and cheese on a Tuesday! Alison then showed us the highlights of the collection! Wow!!! What a place and definitely worth a visit if you have never been. There was so many things to look at, and so much information to absorb. One of my favourite parts was the huge wheel that worked the lifts that took the miners up and down to the pit. It was a very impressive piece of kit and we were told that the man who worked this literally had the lives of the miners in his hands as the ascended and descended the mine shaft. This was a very responsible job, and tended to pass down family lines. I thought this was an interesting fact!

What was particularly interesting was the trip down the mine! Oh my goodness…the conditions that these people worked in! It’s hard to understand without experiencing it, and I think everyone should get the chance to visit and chat to the ex miners who work in the museum in order to fully comprehend just what it was like to be down that mine!

So… now we have visited we are very enthused! above is a picture of some of the books in the archive, these are Coal News and I cannot wait to get a read at them! There is also a log of all accidents and incidents which happened in mines across Scotland! So this should make interesting reading for our budding volunteers and researchers!Making lots of progress on the development of the application, it’s shaping up very nicely! Will keep you all posted…..

Hello everyone, and welcome to our Pits, Ponies, People and Stories BLOG. We are currently in the development stage of this exciting heritage project that will reach every corner of South Lanarkshire.

The Cultural Co-ordinator team have applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for a large scale grant and have received funding in order to further develop it. The project, if successful will be a 2 year community based, learning, research and interpretation project based on the development, working lifespan and decline of the mining industry in South Lanarkshire.

There are four proposed strands to the main project if it passes the development stage. 

1. Almanac Project

2. (Schools Project) Children’s book and Heritage re-enactment

3. DVD Project

4. Exhibitions and Resource Project

There is lots going on at the moment, management steering group meetings, and we have recently set up four sub groups to take forward each strand, which is very exciting!!!

The Cultural Coordinator Team have also gone on a road trip to the national Mining Museum in Edinburgh and were treated to a fantastic and informative day by host  Alison Shepherd the Education Support Officer there. Anyway, find out all about that in our next Blog!

If you have any questions about this project do not hesitate to leave a comment!

Claire