Mining the past

Visited the National Mining Museum at Newtongrange today. This is the engine room, which provided enough power to take over a thousand men, women and children in and out of the pit every day and to bring out 36 million tonnes of coal over the lifetime of the Lady Victoria Colliery.

We were taken on a tour by Sinclair, who worked at the pit until it closed in 1981. His words, like the pit buildings around us, were tinged with pride, sadness and nostalgia: Scotland used to boast 187 pits; now it has none.